2022 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 157-173
A large amount of food is wasted in Japan, especially after they are purchased by consumers. Unfortunately, a larger amount is also wasted pre-purchase. How this waste occurs depends largely on consumer behavior, thus it is important to consider food waste reduction from the perspective of consumers. To facilitate this consideration, this study classifies consumers according to their food lifestyle and food consumption behavior in relation to food waste before characterizing each segment in both classifications and analyzing their relations. This study uses the “Food-Related Lifestyle: FRL” analysis proposed by Grunert for segmenting the former, and newly develops a structured questionnaire “Food Waste Behavior: FWB” for the latter. From our results, consumers can be classified into 6 FRL-segments and 4 FWB-segments. Some FRL-segments obtained in this study were also found in Grunert’s study, but new Japanese consumer-specific segments were also identified. By characterizing FWB-segments, it is suggested that improving cooking skills is effective in reducing food waste. Analyzing the relations between FWB and FRL segments revealed that FWB-Segment 4 “Frequent Home Delivery Users Without Worrying About Food Waste” has the highest average score for the factor of “food waste” while most consumers in this FWB-segment belonged to FRL-segment 1 “Uninterested in Food.” Thus, food waste reduction measures should be primarily focused on the intersection of these segments. Both FWB and FRL approaches were effective in devising food waste reduction measures. Concrete actions include encouraging organizations such as companies and schools to implement educational programs on food waste issues, developing and certifying human resources capable of conducting such education, and holding competition events for effective gamification related to food waste reduction. We should also certify and commend excellent industrial cases and add them to a database.
