PROPIEDADES DINÁMICAS DE MATERIALES CON ADICIÓN DE

The focus of this stage of the research was to determine the role played by a food firm in updating consumers’ food safety knowledge during a food recall incident. The data collection focused on an Australian food firm that had recently experienced a recall. The detailed discussion of the three themes was supported by the use of interview excerpts, informed by document reviews and field notes as secondary data sources and linked back to the concept of each axial code. At the conclusion of each theme, the association back to the overall intent of this phase was discussed. The analysis of this stage resulted in three themes: AUTHENTICITY, BRANDING and BUSINESS AGILITY.

The initial findings of the Preliminary Stage, Phase One of the research are classified into five key points. First, the firm, which mainly targets a niche market, is interested in

sharing information with its end consumers to facilitate the purchase of their products. Premium consumers are becoming more interested in different types of information such as information relevant to the product, origin and the producer, from the firm. However, after such products have been purchased, little or no information is frequently shared with each consumer of their products on its safe handling and consumption. This is one of the sources of consumer food safety knowledge gaps.

Second, the firm has poor knowledge of how much information should be provided to consumers. On the one hand, the firm believes sending much information is appropriate. However, it is possible to send so much information but still miss the right information consumers actually want. Therefore, the question about the balance of information arises. On the other hand, the firm tends to compromise on the values it claims as well as the values it portrays to the consumers. This results in the firm withholding information from consumers about such compromise and this begins to question the level of transparency the firms has with its consumers.

Third, the firm demonstrates authenticity as a value, which translates to provenance, from the consumers’ point of view. The firm has the information that shows how authentic it is but it is limited by the amount of textual information that can be placed on labels. Consequently, the firm decided to exclude the important information altogether because they fail to understand how to convey the possession of that value to the consumer despite the limitation of each information delivery platform. Thus, it became evident that the multiplicity of information delivery channels is important for firms to reach their consumers because of the broad population. The various ways in which consumers have been classified, by this firm, are as follows: Low income earners, middle income earners and high income earners; Young and technology savvy as opposed to the old and paper-based; and Detailed information seekers as opposed to snappy information seekers. However, the firm has poor knowledge of how the classification of consumers influences their reception and utilisation of diverse information forms. Also, the firm has poor knowledge of how much each of the information delivery platforms covers the consumer base.

Fourth, as the firm has recently experienced a recall situation, it became sceptical about updating end consumers regarding the status of their food products after the problem had been rectified because it did not want consumers to have a negative perception.

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Therefore, consumers tend to know there is a food recall about a firm but they are usually not informed that the problem has been rectified. Perhaps, this was as a result of the media involvement. This raises questions about the appropriateness of the information delivery channel for sensitive issues as the firm wanted to update the consumers but could not do so. Thus, the appropriateness of information delivery channels can facilitate or impede the enhancement of consumer food safety knowledge.

In addition, it became evident that recovery from a recall situation depends on the brand reputation before the recall occurred, how the recall situation is handled, how information is managed during and after the recall as well as the practices of the supply chain partners.

Fifth, restrictions are not only placed on information through legislations concerning consumer privacy. A firm that desires to share more information about its products can encounter challenges and restrictions even within its supply chain. Regardless of the reason for such restrictions, firms have to abide by it to retain such partners so as not to lose their shelf space. This scenario shows an imbalance of market power – oligopsony. While this is a problem the firm is facing, questions are being raised about the appropriateness of focusing on paper based channels; thus drawing more attention towards the delivery of information through other channels. More importantly, the problem reveals that the firm is not compelled to continually update every consumer of their product; thus the communication gap is not closed even when a food incident arises as the legal obligation of firms does not require such detailed information updates.

The initial findings from this stage are;

 Once consumers have purchased a food product, the firm does not update its consumers on its safe handling and consumption; thus suggesting that the firm is one of the sources of consumer food safety knowledge gaps.

 Maximizing the benefits of diverse information delivery channels by using multiple channels could be beneficial in closing the gaps in consumer food safety knowledge.

 Recall recovery relies on brand reputation, information management, control mechanisms and the practices of supply chain partners.

 During the recovery phase of a recall incident and when the firm makes compromises about it business values, there is tendency for the firm to withhold information from its consumers; which also suggests that the firm is one of the sources of consumer food safety knowledge gaps.

 More importantly, when a firm is not compelled to close its communication gap with consumers, even when food incidents arise, it becomes more apparent that optimising domestic food safety knowledge post-purchase is largely the responsibility of consumers.

This stage has raised several questions that draws attention to consumers and their knowledge gaps, not only during a food incident; but more broadly, during day to day food management practices. Therefore, it is logical to conduct an investigation on Australian food consumers in order to identify their knowledge gaps on safe food management during their day to day food management practices.

Advanced Stage, Phase One – Consumer perspective 4.3

The focus of the advanced stage of phase one was to generate insights into consumer food safety knowledge gaps. This was done by posing pre-purchase questions, post- purchase questions and questions related to information & communication preferences to the respondents. Please see section 3.5.6.2 for details on how the literature informed the development of the research instrument. The questions were derived from the literature as shown in Table 3-3 and the validity of the research instrument was discussed in section 3.5.6.3. Based on the order of importance, first, the demography of the respondents as well as the descriptive analysis of the screening questions are presented and discussed. This was done to screen out potential respondents, who did not qualify for the survey through the exclusion criteria. Following this, the descriptive analysis of the data regarding the post-purchase questions is presented and discussed. The data was analysed in order to gain an understanding of the food handling practices of the research participants post-purchase, thus providing insights into the existing food safety knowledge gaps. Next, the inferential analysis of the pre-purchase questions using the best-worst scaling discrete choice methodology detailed in section 3.5.6 is presented and discussed. The data was analysed in order to provide an understanding of the attributes that facilitate food, but more specifically meat purchase preferences of the research participants. Finally, the descriptive and inferential analysis of the information

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technology related questions is presented and discussed. The data was analysed in order to generate insight into their information and communication preferences for food safety.

4.3.1 Demography of the Respondents

This sub-section presents the demographic data of the participants. All the respondents live in Australia and they are above 18 years of age. 53% of the respondents were females and 46% males. Half of the respondents were above 50 years of age, 31% were between age 30 and 49 while 19% were between 18 and 29 years. In addition, the participants are located in all the states and regions of Australia except Northern Territory as shown in Figure 4-1. About 70% of all the respondents were from the southern states within Australia, where climate, culture, eating and shopping habits are likely to be more similar and relevant to meat than those in tropical region. The educational background of the participants vary but 35% have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, 12% have High School or Year 10 while those who have completed College or Year 12, Certificate and Diploma/Advanced Diploma were 18% each.

There is a good spread of income across the respondents as revealed in Figure 4-2. It has been argued that the level of income has some influence on the choices people make but more specifically their shopping habits (Cannuscio et al., 2014). The next sub-section discusses the analysis of the screening questions.