Qualitative market research and product development: representations of food and marketing challenges

A new method for analysing social representations from sentences in natural language is presented. The basic nuclei of the social representation of "eating" are extracted from two corpuses, one coming from a large set of definitions from a dictionary, the other from free associations of 2000 French adult subjects. The method shows that "eating", as a mental model, is the connection of "libido", "intake", "foodstuffs", "meal", "filling up" and "living". Further analysis on free associations on "eating well" yields some pragmatic scripts, showing how consumers assemble the basic nuclei into action rules. Results uncover an archaeology of social knowledge, showing some psychological and cultural bases on which lie the contemporary representations of eating. As important marketing issues in the food business today are concerned with the psychological determinants of food behaviour, our method may bring some new tools for market research, and open new data fields to systematic investigation. A paper from an international symposium 'Enjeux actuels du marketing dans l'alimentation et la restauration' held in Montreal, Canada, May 24th to 27th, 1994