Today’s human society provides to food consumers many options that involve difficult decisions. Disoriented and stressed by contradictory messages of mass media and by the warnings of being as slim as possible, a modern consumer gets confused and shows a tendency towards losing his traditional habits. Still, most experts suggest that the adoption of a healthy food behavior, based on minimally processed natural products, may contribute to the development of a sustainable food system. The study aims to design the food profile of Romanian consumers by presenting the underlying factors of a balanced diet. The conducted marketing study was of quantitative nature, in which, a face-to-face survey was used. The questionnaire was applied to individuals aged over 18 years old, and the tool used for collecting data was the structured questionnaire applied to a sample of 1185 Romanian respondents. In this study, the following methods of analysis were used: factor analysis, cluster analysis, and structural equation modeling. The research results present the main aspects underlying the food products classification, the clustering of Romanian consumers by their interest in healthy diet, and the relationships between specific variables influencing the healthy food habits. These results have shown the need for supporting educational campaigns targeted at Romanian consumers aimed to develop healthy food habits that could create conditions needed to reshape food supply, and implicitly, to contribute to the development of environmental sustainability.
Value proposition can be an important source of competitive advantage for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Unlike large companies which follow a rational and sequential process, developing a value proposition in an SME is instead a trial and error process. Therefore, those companies are experimenting with various options. The purpose of this paper was to identify the value strategies used by SMEs based on value dimensions and attributes and to find specific groups of SMEs with a similar market approach. We present a theoretical framework on customer value creation and customer value communication, followed by a quantitative research on 399 Romanian SMEs. We used a principal component analysis to reduce the number of choices and afterwards we ran a cluster analysis to identify the distinct groups of SMEs using specific value propositions. We found that there are three major strategic options based on customer experience, affordability and customization, and four distinct clusters: customer delight (A), multiple sources of differentiation (B), one-to-one marketing (C) and cost—effectiveness (D). Three groups use distinct value propositions—A focuses on customer experience, C on customization, D on affordability—while B mixes all of them.
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