A consumer-oriented segmentation study on edible insects in Switzerland and Thailand

Edible insects might be the meat of the future. However, promoting insects as food, at least in western countries, is not an easy task. Segmenting consumers into various similarly behaving groups and targeting them separately is the first step to more successfully promoting insect cuisine. By taking a cross-cultural perspective on the topic of entomophagy and investigating the impact of different cultural settings, additional insights may be revealed that can be used to develop marketing strategies. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Using survey data from Switzerland (N=542) and Thailand (N=500), a hierarchical cluster analysis yielded four consumer segments in each country.

Interestingly, in both countries, the segments themselves can be named identically and accordingly to Roger’s diffusion of innovation theory: early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. However, the size of the segments and the people within these corresponding segments are quite different sociodemographically and in some of the investigated psychographic scales, such as food neophobia. The authors conclude that consumers in countries with an entomophagy tradition behave quite differently from those without one.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first cross-cultural consumer segmentation study on the topic of entomophagy. Based on these results, initial conclusions can be drawn on how to successfully target the specific segments.