Who Are the Superfoodies? New Healthy Luxury Food Products and Social Media Marketing Potential in Germany

Abstract

Superfoods, former traditional foods that in some cases are now regarded as new healthy luxury food products (NHLFP), have been growing in popularity in high- and middle-income societies. Despite a growing interest in superfoods, a precise definition of NHLFP, which appears to mark a subcategory of superfoods, together with a comprehensive analysis of NHLFP consumer segments does not yet exist. This is of particular relevance to managers as profound knowledge of different consumer groups is a prerequisite for the use of marketing approaches such as social media marketing. Therefore, this research proposes and validates an NHLFP definition and investigates whether promising NHLFP consumer groups can be identified based on selected psychographic and sociodemographic consumer characteristics and whether these groups are also accessible through social media marketing. A data set of 697 fruit consumers in Germany was retrieved in the time period of May to June 2020 and analyzed through exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. Eleven factors and four consumer groups were identified, two of which represented favorable superfood consumer groups—one group consumed for intrinsic, health-related reasons rather than for luxury-driven motives, while the other showed tendencies to purchase superfoods for luxury reasons, thus emerging as a promising NHLFP target group. This group is relatively younger, well-educated, and highly receptive of online marketing.

Can new healthy luxury food products accelerate short food supply chain formation via social media marketing in high-income countries?

“…On the other hand, social media platforms offer a unique selling point to retailers because they enable targeted group advertising (Arrigo 2018 ; Kim and Ko 2010 ; Liu et al 2021 ). Similar or even stronger benefits are to be expected for NHLFPs because promising consumer segments are receptive to targeted marketing strategies and regularly share eating habits with friends (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b ; Gunarathne et al 2017 ; Hemmerling et al 2016 ). Some NHLFP producer associations, such as blueberry growers (FruitGrowerNews 2018 ), have begun to recognize such developments and started to engage in SMM increasingly.…”

“…This health-related luxury dimension of superfoods is likely to become even more important in the future as superfoods gradually substitute former luxury products, such as digital hardware and clothing, which have become more accessible to a wider range of consumer segments (Oude Groeniger et al 2017 ). As a result of these different luxury dimensions, some superfoods, such as blueberries, are considered to represent the subcategory of so called new healthy luxury food products (NHLFPs) 1 (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b ).…”

“…Yet, most of their marketing efforts seem to neglect important NHLFP luxury dimensions that are critical drivers to NHLFP consumption. Developing a better understanding of how SMM can promote different NHFLP luxury dimensions could help steering farmers’ shared NHLFP marketing efforts more efficiently (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b ).…”

“…Current sustainability and healthy eating trends, which are particularly distinct among NHLFP consumer groups (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b ), are often compared through food-related activities via social media platforms (Hemmerling et al 2016 ). While doing so, consumers tend to value closer connections to the primary producers as the environmental and social impacts of the products that they consume become more visible and thus can be compared more easily (Elghannam et al 2018 , 2020 ).…”

How Information on Superfoods Changes Consumers’ Attitudes: An Explorative Survey Study

“…Identifying the preferences of consumers is essential to improving communication and marketing strategies [12]. Studies have explored consumer perceptions of functional foods [13,14] and superfoods [5][6][7]15,16], while others [17][18][19][20] have focused on nutritional properties of superfoods. However, to the best of our knowledge, none of these studies have explored consumers' changing attitudes toward superfoods.…”