Exploring consumer attitude towards snacking practices

Abstract

Snacks are defined as food, smaller in quantity than a regular meal, that is eaten between regular meals reduce the cravings of hunger. Snacking is a common practice across the globe, with children and adults of all cultures and nations consuming snacks. Packaged snacks are snacks that are usually not homemade and come in packages, where the packages have a significant amount of time of expiry and sold by brands and local players alike. The amount of snack consumption by children and adults’ changes across culture and nations and its perception that snacks are meant for consumption for kids also changes across cultures. This study is focused on exploring attitudes towards packaged snacks in the Indian context The objective of the study is to explore consumer attitudes towards consumer snacking practices, with a focus on packaged snacks. This study focuses on the attitudes of Indian consumers’ snacking practices and the results of the research is therefore relevant to brands that target Indian consumers. Based on an extensive literature study and hypothesis development, the parameters that influence the attitudes have been analyzed and managerial implications for brands have been written based on the analyses An extensive literature study was conducted to explore various dimensions that related to consumer attitudes and form a base for the study. There are three different components of attitudes according to the tri component model namely the cognitive, affective and conative. Literature survey was conducted to extract components related to beliefs, affect, hedonic consumption, intention to buy and other components were explored to extract the cognitive affective and conative dimension. Other factors that influence the attitudes are concern for knowledge and information, dispositions, emotion, utilitarian function, situation and cues. Specific literature was surveyed, and the relevant components were extracted for each of these dimensions. A total of 31 Research Papers were used for the literature survey and total of nine components for influence on attitudes were formed, namely Cognitive, Affective, Conative, Knowledge, Utilitarian, Reference groups, Disposition, Situation and Cues.