Intention to Try Unfamiliar Food: The Role of Level and Type of Unfamiliarity, Food Neophobia, and Ethnocentrism

Abstract

The present work is focused in some aspects of the adoption process of unfamiliar foods. We make a distinction for the concept of unfamiliar food based on consumers’ degree of knowledge of the ingredients, therefore, we categorize unfamiliar food in two different types: unknown food (unknown ingredients) and novelty combination food (known ingredients combined in a novel or unusual way). Based on this distinction, we analyze the effect of this different source of food unfamiliarity on the intention to try it, considering personal traits such as food neophobia and consumer ethnocentrism. Our results show that the degree of food unfamiliarity has a higher impact on intention to try in consumers with low levels of consumer ethnocentrism, and that type of unfamiliarity moderates the effect of level of unfamiliarity on intention to try only in consumers with high level of consumer ethnocentrism.

KEYWORDS:

• unfamiliar food
• intention to try
• food neophobia
• ethnocentrism

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the CONICYT Research Council of Chile (FONDECYT grant 11080096).