As people pay more attention and have more interest in health recently, the demand on various information and knowledge on health is increasing and more and more people get to pay attention to health functional food. With the increased attention, mass...
As people pay more attention and have more interest in health recently, the demand on various information and knowledge on health is increasing and more and more people get to pay attention to health functional food. With the increased attention, mass media are providing various information on health and nutrition and nutrition information that mass media provide make direct or indirect influence on the future purchase of health functional food associating with the interest in health. In this study, we tried to identify the correlations between nutrition information mass media provide and the purchase of health functional food by analyzing the purchase and the satisfaction for the health functional food with the most interested nutrition information, nutrition information acquisition frequency, interest and reliability and the kind of the mass media which they get nutrition information mainly.
The subjects were 568 adults in large cities such as Seoul, Daegu and Ulsan. When analyzing mass media related variables according to demographical variables, we found the followings; with the increased age and monthly average income, they tended to acquire nutrition information through TV, newspaper and magazine, had interest in nutrition information regarding disease prevention and cure. Those who are younger and have less monthly income tended to get nutrition information through internet and have more interest in cosmetics and weight control(p<0.05). Male subjects tended to have interest in the recovery from tiredness and prevention and remedy from the disease, while female subjects tended to have higher interest in cosmetics and weight control(p<0.05). As they became older, they had more interest in nutrition information that mass media provide and acquired it more frequently. Female subjects showed higher interest and reliance on the nutrition information that mass media provide, which is significantly different between genders(p<0.05). From the analysis of the health functional food purchase and satisfaction rate according to mass media related variables, we could find that those who have more interest in disease prevention and remedy, and health maintenance and promotion had significantly more experiences in health functional food purchase. Those who have more interest in cosmetics and weight control had significantly less experiences in health functional food purchase (p<0.05). Those who have more interest, are more reliance on and acquire nutrition information more frequently had significantly more experiences in health functional food purchase(p<0.05). The number of health functional food purchase according to the mass media from which they get nutrition information was 8.59 for others (including specialized books), 8.32 for the newspapers and the magazines, 7.61 for TV and 6.12 for internet(p<0.05). It shows the more they have interest in nutrition information and the oftener they acquire nutrition information, the more health functional food they buy. As the interest and reliability grows, the satisfaction for the health functional food purchase grows together(p<0.05).
From the results, we can conclude that those who have more interest in nutrition information and acquire nutrition information more frequently have more purchase experiences and buy more. Therefore it is very important to secure the accuracy and expertise of the nutrition information to be delivered to the consumers through mass media. With this, we need to educate consumers so that they can judge the right and wrong of the nutrition information that mass media provide and how to select the right health functional food.