Consumer acceptance of genetic-based personalized nutrition in Hungary

Abstract

Background Despite the increasing number of personalized nutrition services available on the market, nutrigenomics-based level of personalization is still the exception rather than a mainstream activity. This can be partly explained by various factors of consumer acceptance of the new technology. While consumer attitudes toward genetic tests aiming to reveal the risks of a predisposition to various illnesses have already been examined by several research studies worldwide; consumer acceptance of nutrigenomics-based personalized nutrition has only been examined by a significantly lower number of papers, especially in the Central and Eastern European region. Objective The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer acceptance of genetic-based personalized nutrition in Hungary. Therefore a national representative survey was conducted involving 1000 individuals. The starting point of the model used is the assumption that the consumer acceptance of personalized nutrition is influenced by its consumer perceptions, which are affected by psychological processes that, in a more general sense, determine acceptance of food innovations. Results The results show that 23.5% of respondents accept genetic test-based personalized nutrition. Women were found to reject the new technology in a significantly smaller proportion than men. The relationship between other demographic variables (i.e. age groups, education and subjective income level) and the perception of genetic-based personalized nutrition is also significant. Our results indicate that it is perceived cost/benefit that is most strongly related to genetically based personalized dietary preferences, followed by perceived risk and subjective norms. Perceived uncertainty and perceived behavioural control, however, have only a weak relationship with genetic-based personalized dietary preferences. Conclusions Compared with the magnitude of the effect of socio-demographic criteria, it can be concluded that, on the whole, psychological processes in the individual have a greater influence on the development of preferences for genetic-based personalized nutrition than any socio-demographic factor. This also confirms the trend that there are more and more value-added products or value propositions (where a significant part of the value added is to be found in product innovation), for which psychological characteristics are/should be given more emphasis among the segmentation criteria.

Sex and age differences in attitudes and intention to adopt personalised nutrition in a UK sample

“…The results imply that males may be less receptive to personalised nutrition and less likely to take it up in the future. The finding that males held less favourable attitudes and were less likely than females to intend to adopt personalised nutrition agrees with previous survey research on healthy eating (Hiller et al 2017) and on personalised nutrition (Szakaly et al 2021;Stewart-Knox et al 2009). This, along with results from the wider Food4Me survey (Fischer et al 2016) indicating that males were less willing to pay for personalised nutrition than females, implies that personalised, nutritional genomic intervention should target men and women differently (Corella et al 2019).…”

“…Studies on attitudes and adoption of personalised nutrition in relation to sociodemographic factors, however, are scarce. Surveys conducted in Hungary ( N = 1000) (Szakaly et al 2021 ), ( N = 500) (Szakaly et al 2016 ) and another in six EU countries ( N = 5967) (Stewart-Knox et al 2009 ) both suggested that attitudes toward personalised nutrition were more favourable in women than men. The Hungarian survey (Szakaly et al 2016 ) also identified more favourable attitudes among those with a higher education level.…”

Authors’ Response

“…Our review of several articles directly relevant to the dietetics community from around the world revealed that these articles continue to use the term nutrigenomics to describe the use of genetic variations to personalize dietary recommendations. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] The use of the term nutrigenomics is similarly used by various regulatory bodies and dietetic organizations globally. [13][14][15][16][17] Importantly, to avoid potential confusion, we indicated in the introduction of the article that "the term nutrigenomics is used to describe the application of genetic information to personalize nutrition recommendations."…”

Genetic nutrition programmes – disappointment or empowered health? Exploring consumer engagement to understand social health change

“…GPN is important to social marketing as the uptake of individual "roadmaps" of diet, nutrition and exercise set GPN apart from health "fads" that may not change health behaviour (Celis-Morales et al, 2017;Chaudhary et al, 2021). As genomic science is at the forefront of social change in medicine, biotechnology and bioengineering (Galimberti et al, 2019), so too may the unique health programmes of GPN facilitate social change in marketing (Szak aly et al, 2021). In this vein, GPN may be recognised as an empowerment tool to promote health behaviour in consumers (Besson et al, 2020), delivering on broad social change (Carvalho and Mazzon, 2015).…”

“…However, although GPN is becoming increasingly important in social health research (Fenech, 2019), GPN programmes remain a niche activity and are not yet mainstream among consumers (Szak aly et al, 2021). Further, the lion's share of marketing research has explored consumer acceptance of GPN (Poínhos et al, 2018;Kiss, 2019;Stewart-Knox et al, 2019;Reinders et al, 2020), whereas research on how consumers engage with GPN programmes remains limited (Rusu et al, 2020).…”