Identifying and Prioritizing Primary Drivers for Purchasing Convenience Food Ingredients by Women in Urban India

Abstract

Convenience as a concept is one of the foundations on which human survival and evolution is built as Homosapiens continuously innovated convenient ways to conserve resources including time and energy to re-allocate for its safety and progress. Food, being the everyday basic need, convenience in food started since Paleolithic age. Archaeologists collected evidence of bread making in Europe about 30000 years ago, hence the presence of food processing and convenience foods. newlineThe modern convenience foods are shaped by advancement in science and technology in 18th century, industrialization in 19th century and globalization of 20th centuries. The heightened commerce in this period drawn the attention of multi-disciplinary scholars to study this phenomenon. Social scientists and marketeers researched extensively over 100 years to characterize convenience foods, various contexts shaped them, the consumer drivers, and barriers for purchasing of these foods at different point of time. Scholars categorized convenience food into different groups like Ready to Cook, Ready to Eat convenience foods etc. based on their nature and use. However, one important group of convenience foods called convenience ingredients is studied sparingly, that too as part of other convenience groups. newlineConvenience ingredients is named as Convenience Food Ingredients in this study, deserve in-depth study, given the veracity, volume, and revenue involved with this convenience food. Hence, the aim of this study was to understand various dimensions of Convenience Food Ingredients like what are and what are not Convenience Food Ingredients, how to categorize them, what are the factors influence or deter the purchasing of these ingredients and, the impact of socio-demographic variables on them. COVID-19 pandemic impacted the world at the time of this study which had bearing on almost all aspect of human life. Hence, its impact on the use of Convenience Food Ingredients was also studied.