Team:Groningen/market research

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Market research



The Food Warden sticker, containing our modified Bacillus bacteria, could be perceived as a potential product. Therefore, we decided to conduct a market research survey, where we ask the respondents questions about their general food habits and if they would be interested in Food Warden as a possible product on the market. We also ask if they consider using a GMO-containing sticker next to food as safe. We used the surveygizmo survey engine for this task.

The respondents

We received a total of 167 responses to the survey. Most of our respondents (56.3%) were 16-25 years of age, 22.2% of the respondents were older than 40, and 21% of age between 26 and 40. Only one respondent (0.6%) was younger than 16 years of age.
This portrays our respondent group as young crowd, and in fact we recruited many of our respondents from students of our university (however, of multiple faculties - these are not biology students only!)
Vast majority (77.2%) of the respondents answered that they go grocery shopping on their own, and do they cook on their own.

Also, most of them (88.6%) buy their meat at the supermarket. The biggest group of the respondents buys meat two-three times a week (36.5%), or almost everyday (27.5%). Overall, more respondents buy food products in smaller amounts, only what they need immediately, even if it costs more (54.5%) compared to buying bigger ("family") packages to save money (45.5%).




Best before dates and food waste

The opinions of the respondents on "best before" dates were split: 52.1% does not think that such dates give an accurate measure of food edibility, while 47.9% believes they do. According to our survey results, many of the respondents throw away food - if they are not certain if it is good - relatively rarely (once a month - 46.1%, never or almost never - 21%). However, roughly a third of the respondents admits they do that often (29.3% - few times a month, 3.6% - more than once a week).

Food Warden as a potential product

85.2% of the respondents would like to use a product like the Food Warden sticker to indicate whether their meat is good to eat or not, out of which 72.5% would like to be sure if their meat is safe to eat, and 9% would be able to save money through buying bigger meat packages.

Interestingly, 67.7% of all respondents are willing to pay extra for their meat to include such a product, 5-15 eurocents or more.
Moreover, 82.5% of the respondents would like to see a product like Food Warden on the market; 12.1% like the concept, but wouldn't use the product; only 5.4% think such product is not needed.


GMOs next to food

Since we were asked by many people about public perception of using GMOs next to food, we asked our respondents very important question: Considering all of our safety measures, would you think the product containing GMOs would be safe to use next to your food? 55.8% answered yes, and 38.8% were not certain and would need to learn more about the safety measures. Only 3% of all respondents do not think it is safe.

Click to download full survey report