Food Consumption and Consumer Behaviour. How socio-economic and political factors have shaped food advertising and consumers' approach to the food industry from 1900 to the present

Abstract

History might be of great help in shedding light on the actors shaping consumers’ approach towards food consumption and their preferences. Development and innovation processes are often unpredictable and uncertain, they involve multiple actors and factors, they are often difficult to decode for observers and practitioners. In this sense, historical research helps to frame these processes, because it reconstructs their origins and dynamics, and at the same time it can give useful insight and suggestions on how to manage nowadays processes. With particular reference to the food industry, which is one of the most developed within the Italian Country, consumer behavior and food advertising have witnessed significant changes over time. To understand which factors contributed to this changes, a research through the history of Italy from early 1900s to today is undertaken, basing on the existing literature on this theme and in particular to the research of the contemporary historian Emanuela Scarpellini. Past and present consumption choices are the result of a multitude of different factors: political, social, economic, geographical and cultural, which altogether prove the interlink between consumers and the environment in which they are embedded. A particular focus will be put on the key role that advertising and communication have been playing over time and the extent to which they influenced food consumption choices will be studied through the analysis of several editions of the magazine "La Cucina Italiana". The historical research on food consumption patterns, that begins with the study of food preferences of the Twentieth Century, will arrive up to the present society, different compared to the past ones under many points of view. In order to understand which are the factors that affect nowadays consumers' buying behavior towards the food industry and to determine the extent to which they do so, an empyrical analysis is carried out, through a survey on a sample of 480 consumers.