Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138

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Food Quality and Preference

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodqual

General image and attribute perceptions of traditional food

in six European countries
Valérie Lengard Almli a,b,⇑, Wim Verbeke c, Filiep Vanhonacker c, Tormod Næs a, Margrethe Hersleth a
a
Nofima Mat AS, Osloveien 1, N-1430 Ås, Norway
b
The Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Department of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Box 5003, N-1432 Ås, Norway
c
Ghent University, Department of Agricultural Economics, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Gent, Belgium

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper studies the image of traditional food at pan-European and national levels in six countries: Bel-
Received 22 February 2010 gium, France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Spain. A consumer survey about traditional food products (TFP)
Received in revised form 3 June 2010 was conducted. The respondents (n = 4828) indicated their personal general opinion and feelings about
Accepted 10 August 2010
TFP and characterised TFP according to 15 intrinsic and extrinsic product attributes. Traditional food is
Available online 13 August 2010
found to have a unanimously positive general image across Europe. The main patterns of product attri-
bute perceptions are coherent in the six countries. The results show that European consumers trade-off
Keywords:
the relative expensiveness and time-consuming preparation of traditional food for the specific taste,
Traditional food
Image
quality, appearance, nutritional value, healthiness and safety they find in TFP. Further, the general image
Attribute perception of TFP relates to attributes typical of a festive consumption of traditional foods rather than a consumption
Survey of daily character. The implications of our findings for the future market of traditional food are discussed.
Cross-cultural Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR)
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

1. Introduction perception of product attributes, are therefore important to collect

Product image has a powerful influence on consumer behaviour.
Studies on brand image have shown that brand exposure impacts on
our product choice behaviour (Guinard, Uotani, & Schlich, 2001;
Pohjanheimo & Sandell, 2009) and even on our overall behaviour
(Fitzsimons, Chartrand, & Fitzsimons, 2008). Marketers have long
exploited the power of brand image to sell their products, and there
is an emergence of marketing efforts focusing on whole product cat-
egories, such as campaigns inviting to a daily consumption of fruits
and vegetables, for example in Norway and France. A positive image
creates positive consumer expectations, which in turn may lead to
product purchase. According to Deliza and MacFie (1996), it is
necessary that consumers’ expectations are met upon product
consumption to yield satisfaction and ensure re-purchase of the
product. If consumers’ expectations fail to be met, a negative discon-
firmation occurs and the product might never be purchased again.
Consequently, in order to be successful on the market a product or
product category needs to both benefit from a positive general
image and offer product qualities that match or surpass consumers’
expectations. These two pieces of information, i.e., image and
⇑ Corresponding author at: Nofima Mat AS, Osloveien 1, N-1430 Ås, Norway. Tel.:
+47 64 97 03 05; fax: +47 64 97 03 33.
E-mail address: valerie.almli@nofima.no (V.L. Almli).
and study.
This paper investigates the general image of traditional food
products (TFP). TFP have per definition a long history on the food
market, and accordingly every consumer has a relationship to this
product category. Published definitions of traditional foods include
temporal, territorial and cultural dimensions (Bertozzi, 1998; EU,
2006; Jordana, 2000), the idea of a transmission from generation
to generation (EU, 2006; Trichopoulou, Soukara, & Vasilopoulou,
2007) and, more recently, elaborative statements about traditional
ingredients, traditional composition and traditional production
and/or processing (Weichselbaum, Benelam, & Soares Costa,
2009). These definitions take source in food professionals’ perspec-
tives, but do not necessarily correspond to consumers’ envision of
traditional food. Consumer studies on traditional food have re-
cently been conducted in order to define and characterise the con-
cept of TFP seen from a European consumers’ perspective
(Guerrero et al., 2009, 2010; Vanhonacker, Verbeke, et al., 2010).
According to Vanhonacker, Verbeke, et al. (2010), European con-
sumers define traditional foods as ‘‘frequently consumed or associ-
ated to specific celebrations and/or seasons, transmitted from one
generation to another, made in a specific way according to the gastro-
nomic heritage, naturally processed, distinguished and known because
of their sensory properties and associated to a certain local area,
region or country”. This definition reflects the broadness of TFP as

0950-3293/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2010.08.008
130 V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138

a concept, and a large amount of subjectivity is shown in European ten used (Guinot, Latreille, & Tenenhaus, 2001; Tenenhaus, Vinzi,
consumers’ definition of TFP (Vanhonacker, Verbeke, et al., 2010). Chatelin, & Lauro, 2005). A side-objective of this paper will be to
Further, when investigating the association between traditional illustrate the possibilities of using PCA and PLSR on attitudinal con-
food consumption and motives for food choice in Europe, Pieniak, sumer survey data, and possibly to raise an interest in these meth-
Verbeke, Vanhonacker, Guerrero, and Hersleth (2009) found ods among food consumer researchers.
healthiness and convenience constructs to have significant nega-
tive associations with traditional food consumption, while famil-
2. Materials and methods
iarity and natural content constructs showed positive significant
associations. These results corroborate Vanhonacker, Lengard,
2.1. Research approach and sampling
Hersleth, and Verbeke (2010) whom in their work of profiling
European traditional food consumers found that the attitudes
Quantitative descriptive data were collected in October–
and behaviours of traditional food consumers significantly differed
November 2007 through a cross-sectional self-administered
from those of non-traditional food consumers in diverse domains
consumer survey with samples representative for age, gender and
including health, cooking, food shopping, convenience and ethno-
region in Norway, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Poland. The
centrism. These publications give information about European con-
age range of the population was defined as 20–70 years. The total
sumers’ definition of, associations to and consumption attitudes for
sample size was 4828 respondents, i.e., around 800 respondents
TFP, but they neither give information about the standing and the
in each of the six considered European countries. Participants were
reputation of TFP in the food market, nor about the consumers’
randomly selected from the representative TNS European Online
perceptions of TFP attributes.
Access Panel (Malhotra & Peterson, 2006) in line with the national
The purpose of this paper is to reveal the general image of tra-
population distributions with respect to age, gender and region.
ditional food in six geographically spread European countries, and
Detailed socio-demographic characteristics of the national and
to explore consumers’ perceptions of specific product attributes of
pooled samples are provided in Table 1. Gender is equally distrib-
TFP covering a selection of sensory, health, ethics, purchasing and
uted, which reflects that the population was intentionally not re-
convenience factors. Correlations between the overall image of TFP
stricted to the main responsible person for food purchasing. Age
and the attributes perceptions will be examined in a multivariate
distributions, mean age and mean household sizes match closely
approach. By mapping consumers’ perception and overall evalua-
with the national census data of the respective countries. Table 1
tion of TFP, insight will be gained on consumers’ expectations
also presents an indicator of socio-economic class, which was a sub-
and intention to purchase this product category, and relevant
jective assessment of the household’s financial situation
information will be gathered with respect to future product posi-
(Chittleborough, Baum, Taylor, & Hiller, 2008). The measurement
tioning and marketing communications.
was given on a seven-point interval scale ranging from ‘‘difficult”
To achieve our goal, cross-cultural data collected from Belgium,
to ‘‘well off”. Subdivisions were made between respondents who
France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Spain were studied. The selection
perceived their financial situation as rather unsatisfactory (answer-
of countries was done with the aim to cover the geographical
ing 1, 2 or 3 on the seven-point scale), moderate (answering 4) or
North–South and East–West axes of Europe. As these data contain
satisfactory (answering 5, 6 or 7). Although this subjective measure
a high amount of collinearity, and as our purpose invites for an
may not necessarily reflect the actual financial situation or socio-
exploratory approach, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and
economic class of the households, its distribution suggests that
Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) multivariate modelling
different socio-economic classes were represented in the sample.
were used. Because these models do not require any hard-model-
The sample is slightly biased towards higher education, which
ling inputs from the researcher, such that no assumptions on data
may be attributed to the use of an electronic data collection method.
relationships are required, they have been applied extensively in
sensory and consumer hedonic studies. PLSR in particular is said
to be a versatile and cognitive method (Martens, 2001), yet it has 2.2. Measurement and scaling
remained largely out of the scene when it comes to the analysis
of consumer attitudinal and behavioural data (for an exception, The questionnaire consisted of five sections: (1) behavioural
see Vanhonacker, Lengard, et al. (2010)), where the stepwise linear and attitudinal items relating to food purchasing in general, (2)
regression and PLS Path Modelling (PLS-PM) methods are more of- items probing for consumers’ definition, attitude and perceptions

Table 1
Selected socio-demographic characteristics of the samples.

Pooled sample (n = 4828) Norway (n = 798) Belgium (n = 826) France (n = 801) Spain (n = 800) Italy (n = 800) Poland (n = 803)
Gender (%)
Female 49.2 49.1 49.4 51.9 47.4 47.3 50.2
Male 50.8 50.9 50.6 48.1 52.6 52.7 49.8
Age (years)
<35 34.1 34.1 28.5 33.7 35.5 35.0 37.9
35–55 46.4 47.5 46.4 46.4 47.4 45.8 44.8
>55 19.5 18.4 25.1 19.9 17.1 19.2 17.3
Mean 41.5 41.4 43.7 41.4 40.7 41.2 40.6
S.D. 12.8 12.5 13.3 12.8 12.3 12.8 12.8
Household size (number)
Mean 2.9 2.6 2.7 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.0
S.D. 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.2 1.3 1.3 1.4
Financial situation (%)
Difficult – moderate 24.6 24.8 17.8 35.5 18.9 29.8 21.3
Moderate 32.1 31.5 28.6 32.5 36.2 32.8 31.0
Moderate – well off 43.3 43.7 53.6 32.0 44.9 37.4 47.7
 V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138 131

of traditional food, (3) consumer awareness of and associations
with quality and origin labels, (4) items probing for consumer’s
definition and acceptance of innovations in traditional food prod-
ucts, and (5) personal data relating to lifestyle and general inter-
ests, and socio-demographics. A description of the selection of
items and pre-testing of the questionnaire is given in Vanhonacker,
Verbeke, et al. (2010).
In this paper, attention is brought on two questions from sec-
tion (2) of the survey, focusing on attitudes toward and perception
of traditional food. The first selected question is a direct measure-
ment of the image of traditional food: ‘‘When you think about the
image you have of traditional food in general, how would you de-
scribe your personal opinion/feelings about it?”. For this measure-
ment, a seven-point Likert scale anchored with ‘‘very negative” to
the left, ‘‘neither positive nor negative” at mid-point and ‘‘very
positive” to the right was used. The second question of interest re-
lates to the respondents’ perceptions of a series of intrinsic and
extrinsic product attributes of traditional food: ‘‘Please indicate
to what extent traditional food has the following characteristics
according to you”. A set of 15 items with seven-point semantic dif-
ferential scales was given, with a negative anchor to the left (e.g.
Low in quality) and a positive anchor to the right (e.g. High in qual-
ity). The full list of attributes is presented in Table 2. The selection
of these attributes was based on the results from a qualitative
study involving focus groups discussions and word association
tests (Guerrero et al., 2009, 2010).
dummy variables (Martens & Martens, 2001), allowing to project
the six countries onto the PCA loadings plot. In addition to the
pan-European model, similar PCA models were run for each of
the six countries separately.
Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) (Esbensen, 2001; Mar-
tens & Martens, 2001) was used to relate the respondents’ attribute
perceptions of traditional food to their personal general image of
traditional food. Seven models were built in total: one per country
and one for the pan-European sample (n = 4765 after removal of
cases with missing values). The data were mean-centred along
respondents for reasons mentioned above. In each model, the
dependent variable is the measurement of general image and the
set of independent variables is composed of the 15 product attri-
bute perceptions of TFP given in Table 2, where each attribute is la-
belled by its right scale anchor. All data were standardised.
Country-specific models were cross-validated with 20 random seg-
ments (Stone, 1974); the pan-European model was cross-validated
with six segments corresponding to the six countries involved.
Jack-knife uncertainty testing (Martens & Martens, 2000) was per-
formed on the regression coefficients to detect the attributes sig-
nificantly related to general image with a 95% confidence
interval. In the case of the pan-European model, the cross-valida-
tion on six countries combined with uncertainty testing revealed
the consensus attributes, that is to say attributes that are applica-
ble across countries. All multivariate models were run in The
Unscrambler 9.8 (CAMO Software AS).

2.3. Multivariate analysis 3. Results and discussion

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) (Esbensen, 2001; Martens 3.1. General image of traditional food
& Martens, 2001) was used to study the main patterns in attribute
perceptions of traditional food. The model was computed over 15 The general image of TFP receives a unanimous positive score
variables corresponding to the 15 product attributes presented to across the six European countries, scoring above 5.5 on average
the respondents, labelled with their right anchors (see Table 2). on the seven-point scale (Table 3). The two highest mean scores
The full sample of European respondents except for five cases with are seen in Spain (6.04) and Poland (6.01), while the lowest mean
missing values was included in the model (n = 4823). The data scores are observed for Belgium (5.51) and France (5.62). The mean
were mean-centred along respondents so as to highlight differ- score for the pan-European sample is 5.80, with a standard devia-
ences in perceptions rather than differences in scale usage (Næs, tion of 1.06. The frequency distributions of the general image
Lengard, Bølling Johansen, & Hersleth, 2010). Mean-centring at scores corroborate the positive image of TFP across Europe
respondent level was done by subtracting the mean attribute score (Fig. 1). A strikingly low number of 81 respondents (1.7%) out of
of a respondent to each of his/her 15 attribute scores. The respon- the 4765 pan-European valid answers collected for this question
dents’ nationalities were included in the model as downweighted utilised the «negative» side of the scale, i.e., scores from 1 to 3 on
the seven-point scale, when reporting their personal image of tra-
Table 2 ditional food. An analysis of scores distributions by gender and age
Perception measurement of 15 attributes of traditional foods (seven-point scales).
groups showed no effect of gender, but a tendency to differences in
Left anchor (score 1) Right anchor (score 7) age groups: the older the consumers, the higher their positivity to-
Low in quality High in quality wards TFP (results not shown). This corroborates prior results
Inconsistent quality Consistent quality where traditional food consumers were profiled to be middle-aged
Bad taste Good taste to elderly (Vanhonacker, Lengard, et al., 2010). Further segmenta-
Ordinary taste Special taste
tion and profiling of the respondents other than country-wise is
Bad appearance Good appearance
Unhealthy Healthy
outside the scope of this paper; we refer to Vanhonacker, Lengard,
Difficult to prepare Easy to prepare et al. (2010) for a consumer profiling in relation to TFP based on all
Low availability High availability sections of the questionnaire.
Time-consuming to prepare Not time-consuming to prepare
Unsafe Safe
Low nutritional value High nutritional value 3.2. Attribute perceptions of traditional food
Expensive Inexpensive
Narrow assortment Wide assortment Fig. 2 presents the PCA correlation loadings (PC1 vs. PC2) on the
Environmental unfriendly Environmental friendly
perceptions of TFP attributes. The first two model dimensions
Not supportive for our local economy Supportive for our local economy
reproduce 35% of the total variation and give insights in the main

Table 3
Mean and standard deviation of the general image of traditional food (scale: 1–7).

Belgium (n = 801) France (n = 783) Italy (n = 793) Norway (n = 796) Poland (n = 796) Spain (n = 796) Total sample (n = 4765)
Mean (S.D.) 5.51 (1.02) 5.62 (1.07) 5.93 (0.96) 5.71 (1.15) 6.01 (1.11) 6.04 (0.94) 5.80 (1.06)
132 V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138

Fig. 1. Frequencies of respondents’ scores on the general image scale per country. 1 = Very negative; 4 = neither positive nor negative; 7 = very positive.

HEALTH & ETHICS

0.8
Supportive economy
0.6 Environ. friendly

0.4 High nutrition PURCHASE & CONVENIENCE

Safe
Component 2 (12%)

0.2 Inexpensive
POLAND
Wide assortment
FRANCE Not time−consuming to prepare
0
Healthy ITALY SPAIN BELGIUM
NORWAY
High quality
−0.2
Special taste Easy to prepare

Good taste High availability

−0.4
Consistent quality
Good appearance
−0.6

−0.8 SENSORY

−1
−1 −0.8 −0.6 −0.4 −0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Component 1 (23%)

Fig. 2. Attribute perceptions of traditional food in six European countries. Three categories of attributes are found.

structured patterns within the attributes. Only the right anchors of
the attributes are shown, while the left anchors are implicit as their
negative correlations. None of the attributes dominate the map nor
are fully explained with only two principal components. This indi-
cates that these 15 attributes cover multidimensional aspects of
traditional foods, as was the intention of the survey. Further, it
indicates diverging attribute perceptions of TFP across the pan-
European sample and population, which relates to the broad char-
acter of these products’ definition.
The model reveals a splitting of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes
(Ophuis & van Trijp, 1995) into three categories sharing common
concepts:
(1) Sensory, composed of intrinsic attributes (taste, appearance)
and experience attributes (taste specialty, quality, quality
consistency).
(2) Health & Ethics, including intrinsic product attributes (nutri-
tional value, safety), and credence attributes related to health
 V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138
(healthy) and ethics (environmental friendliness, support of
local economy). It must be noted that healthy is projected
in-between the first two categories of attributes on the load-
ings map, indicating that healthiness varies somewhat inde-
pendently of the sensory, ethical or convenience attributes.
We chose to include this item with category (2) because it
is conceptually more closely related to safety and nutritional
value than to sensory characteristics (Grunert, 2005;
Verbeke, Frewer, Scholderer, & De Brabander, 2007).
(3) Purchase & Convenience, consisting of extrinsic experience
attributes characterising commercial (availability, assort-
ment, price) and convenience aspects (ease of preparation,
preparation time). Fig. 4 presents the mean perceptions per
country according to the three attribute categories observed
in PCA. Category (3) of properties scored poorly in all coun-
tries but less so in Belgium (Fig. 4), explaining the projection
of Belgium in the direction of Purchase & Convenience attri-
butes on Fig. 2.
It is interesting to note that the intrinsic product properties in
the sensory category are positively correlated to extrinsic health
and ethical attributes on PC1. The fact that TFP can both offer a good
sensory experience and meet ethical concerns may partly explain
the positive image of traditional food. Further, these attributes are
negatively correlated to the extrinsic properties for purchase and
convenience, which score relatively low (Fig. 4). This finding is both
in accordance with Chambers, Lobb, Butler, Harvey, & Traill (2007)
who found that people focusing on convenience in food choice had
a more negative attitude and indicated a lower consumption of lo-
cal foods, and with Pieniak et al. (2009) who concluded that conve-
nience acted as a barrier to traditional food consumption.
3.3. Attribute perceptions of traditional food: national results in six
countries
3.3.1. Average perception scores per country per attribute
In order to highlight national similarities and differences in the
attribute perceptions of TFP, Fig. 3 reports the mean scores per
Fig. 3. Average scores per country per attribute of TFP.
133
country and per attribute. These national mean scores indicate
the overall trends in attribute perceptions as obtained from the
study sample, but may not be representative of the entire popula-
tion in each country. In the following, the attributes that are inter-
preted were selected based on the criterion that they show
relatively high or low values either in comparison to the other
countries, or in comparison to the other attributes within the same
country.
On average, the Spanish and the Italians give similar scores. To
them, TFP are characterised by a good and special taste, a high and
consistent quality, a good appearance, a high nutritional value and
healthiness. The Belgians perceive TFP as having a good taste, a
high quality and a high availability. The French find TFP to be of
high quality and rather expensive. The Poles characterise TFP by
a good and special taste, a high yet not highly consistent quality,
a high environmental friendliness, a good support for the local
economy, a high preparation time and rather high prices. The Nor-
wegians characterise TFP with a good taste, a high quality, a rela-
tively low healthiness, a high safety and a long preparation time.
A clear split in the group of countries is observed for six of the
attributes. First, a special taste is attributed to TFP in Italy, Spain
and Poland, but not particularly so in Norway, France and Belgium.
Fig. 3 also reveals differences between Polish and Belgian consum-
ers with regard to their perceptions of availability, ease of prepara-
tion and time of preparation. This may be explained by divergent
conceptions of traditional food in the two countries. According to
Vanhonacker, Verbeke, et al. (2010), while the Poles define tradi-
tional food mainly as specialty dishes consumed on festive occa-
sions, the Belgians mostly consider traditional food as familiar
food of daily character.
Second, Norway demarks itself with a relatively low score on
healthy and a relatively high score on safety. The low score on
healthiness corroborates both Pieniak et al. (2009), who found a
negative association of weight control with the general attitude
to TFP in Norway, and Guerrero et al. (2009) who concluded from
focus group discussions that traditional foods in Norway were
recognised as rather fatty. As for safety, the high perception of this
attribute is consistent with earlier studies where it was shown that
134 V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138
Fig. 4. Average scores per country per category of attributes.
Norwegian consumers feel particularly confident that the govern-
ment’s food controls secure safe food (Berg, 2005).
Third, although consumers in all countries report that tradi-
tional food is not fast to prepare, scoring under mid-point in Nor-
way and Poland, this trend is not marked in Belgium. This relates
probably to the fact that Belgians define TFP rather as familiar food
of daily character, which are often faster to prepare than festive
dishes.
Fourth, TFP are perceived as rather expensive in France, Poland
and Norway, with scores of 3.9 in average, but not in the other
countries. This may reflect the large presence of ‘‘Produits du terr-
oir” in France and the definition of TFP as festive foods in Poland
and Norway (Vanhonacker, Verbeke, et al., 2010).
Last, Spanish respondents perceived the widest assortment of
TFP with a score of 5.1 on average, while respondents in Poland
and Norway scored moderately on the perception of broadness of
assortment with mean scores of 4.2 and 4.4, respectively (Fig. 3).
This variation in perceived assortment may be related to the num-
ber of products that fulfil the EU regulations for protected designa-
tions: 182 Spanish products, 34 Polish products (EC DOOR
database, 2010) and 16 Norwegian products (not shown in the
EC DOOR database as Norway is not a EU member) were registered
by May 2010. It should be noted however that the DOOR database
does not necessarily match the number of traditional food registra-
tions at national levels. In Poland, 732 traditional products were
registered nationally by May 2010 (Polish registry, 2010), a num-
ber in contradiction with the perception of a moderate assortment
by Polish consumers. One possible explanation for this contradic-
tion may be related to the wide food assortments of today, in
which the relative share of traditional foods has decreased as com-
pared to pre-liberalisation periods. Another possible explanation
may be a mismatch between what food professionals and author-
ities define as traditional products, versus what consumers experi-
ence as traditional foods, maybe due to the high regional identity
and diversity of this product category in Poland (Weichselbaum
et al., 2009). Further, the less wide assortments perceived in North-
ern countries may be linked to their rougher climates, which re-
strict the possibilities for a fully varied agriculture compared to
Southern nations like Spain (Jordana, 2000), or linked to different
food quality policy orientations in the respective countries (Becker,
2009).
3.3.2. Patterns in attribute perceptions explored by PCA
In order to study the patterns in attribute perceptions at a na-
tional level, six individual PCA models were run. Explained vari-
ances on the first two principal components range from 31% in
Belgium to 39% in Poland. These models reveal that the three-cat-
egory pattern of (1) Sensory, (2) Health & Ethics and (3) Purchase &
Convenience attributes highlighted in the pan-European model
also applies in each country separately (results not shown). This
indicates a similar understanding and grouping of the selected
product attributes across European food cultures and validates
the translation work in elaborating the survey questionnaire in
six languages. This finding is valuable as it establishes the rele-
vance of building pan-European models and policies based on the
survey and its outcomes.
3.4. Relating attribute perceptions to general image: pan-European
results
The PLSR models at national and pan-European levels confirm
the main pattern of relationships between the attributes seen in
the PCA models (Fig. 2). It is however important to note that unlike
PCA, the PLSR models do not aim at exploring patterns in the attri-
bute perceptions, but at identifying the attributes that contribute
to a positive image of TFP. Therefore, the PLSR results differ some-
what from the PCA results, and more importantly, complement
these. Further, the PLSR results complement the mean descriptive
scores presented in Section 3.3.1. While the mean scores reported
the consumers’ perception of traditional food in terms of 15 indi-
vidual attributes, the PLSR models identify which of these attribute
perceptions specifically shape the overall image of traditional food.
The attributes’ associations to the positive general image of tra-
ditional food in six countries and for the pan-European sample are
presented in Table 4. Significant negative regression coefficients
are symbolised with a minus sign and indicate an association of
general image to the negative anchor of the attribute. Positive coef-
ficients are symbolised with plus and indicate associations to the
positive anchor. All results in Table 4 are shown for one PLS-com-
ponent models, except the model for France which includes two
PLS-components due to a non-negligible contribution of explained
variance on the second model dimension (Comp 1: 11.6%,
cross-validation: 10%; Comp 2: 3.7%, cross-validation: 2%). The
 V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138 135

Table 4
Attributes’ associations to the positive general image of traditional food. ‘‘+” indicates associations to positive attribute anchors; ‘‘ ” indicates associations to negative attribute
anchors; ‘‘ns” stands for non-significant.

Attributes ( /+) associated to general image Belgium Francea Italy Norway Poland Spain Total sample
(n = 801) (n = 783) (n = 793) (n = 796) (n = 796) (n = 796) (n = 4765)
Sensory
Taste (bad/good) + ns + + + + +
Taste (ordinary/special) + + + + + +
Appearance (bad/good) ns ns + + ns ns +
Quality (low/high) + + + + + + +
Quality (inconsistent/consistent) ns ns + + + + +
Health & Ethics
Healthiness (unhealthy/healthy) ns ns ns ns + + +
Safety (unsafe/safe) + ns + ns + + +
Nutritional value (low/high) ns ns ns ns + ns +
Environmental friendliness (unfriendly/friendly) ns ns ns ns + ns ns
Support of local economy (not supportive/supportive) ns ns + ns ns ns ns
Purchase & Convenience
Ease of preparation (difficult/easy) ns ns
Preparation time (time-consuming/not time-consuming)
Availability (low/high) ns ns ns
Assortment (narrow/wide) ns + ns ns ns
Price (expensive/inexpensive)
a
Results from a two-component PLSR model. All other results based on one-component PLSR models.

pan-European model explains 9% (cross-validation: 8.5%) of the
variations in general image. In the following, the pan-European
results are reported and discussed. National results are presented
in Section 3.5.
The eight intrinsic product attributes (taste, taste specialty,
appearance, quality, quality consistency, healthiness, safety and
nutritional value), the convenience attributes (ease and time of
preparation) and two purchase attributes (availability and price)
show statistical significance in their influence on the general image
for the pan-European sample (Table 4). Only three out of the 15
attributes do not show significance at pan-European level. These
are the two ethical attributes (environmental friendliness and sup-
portive of local economy) and purchase attribute assortment.
Among the Purchase & Convenience properties, it is particularly
interesting to observe that negative anchors expensive, low avail-
ability, difficult to prepare and time-consuming to prepare are associ-
ated to a positive general image of TFP. This means that the
respondents who scored relatively low on attributes price, avail-
ability, ease of preparation and preparation time also were the
ones who scored relatively high on general image. This gives evi-
dence that the general image of TFP is not necessarily damaged
by factors of inconvenience in purchasing or preparing this cate-
gory of foods. Prior studies found that for quality-seeking consum-
ers, a high price signals a high quality product (Grunert, Skytte,
Esbjerg, Poulsen, & Hviid, 2002; Juhl, Høg, & Poulsen, 2000;
Verbeke, Vermeir, & Brunsø, 2007; Zeithaml, 1988). Our results
show that high quality is a unanimously significant attribute in
all countries and for the pan-European model (Table 4), suggesting
that consumers of TFP qualify as quality-seekers. For them, a high
price may therefore re-enforce the good image of TFP rather than
deteriorate it. To conclude, our results give evidence that European
consumers may trade-off some degree of inconvenience in the pur-
chase, expensiveness and preparation of TFP in order to enjoy the
specific taste, quality, appearance, nutritional value, healthiness
and safety they find in TFP.
Further, the attributes associated to the general image of tradi-
tional food can be interpreted in relation to the dual appropriate-
ness of use observed by Vanhonacker, Verbeke, et al. (2010).
These authors reported that traditional food consumption can be
associated both to daily or to festive meal occasions. In our results,
several attributes associated to the general image of TFP may
typically describe festive foods rather than everyday foods, for
example: special taste, high quality, difficult and time-consuming to
prepare, low availability and expensive. Conclusively, festive con-
sumptions of traditional food may be the ones that most strongly
shape the general image of TFP in the consumers’ minds. That is
to say that despite a higher frequency of consumption in ordinary
and everyday meals, reflexions and feelings associated to tradi-
tional food may be forged in festive settings.
3.5. Relating attribute perceptions to general image: national results in
six countries
The country-specific models explain from 6% (cross-validation:
5%) of the general image of TFP in Italy and Spain to 16% (cross-val-
idation: 15%) in Norway. The low explained variances of these
models indicate: (a) that the relationships between the general im-
age of TFP and their attributes are very individual, thus no common
model will fit all respondents; (b) that our 15 attributes are not
sufficient to draw the full picture of TFP’s general image. However,
all of the 15 selected attributes are relevant as each of them is sig-
nificantly correlated to general image in at least one country.
A first general observation is that the results are very similar
from one country to another. In the following, we discuss the attri-
butes that contribute to the positive image of TFP for each of the
attribute categories defined in Section 3.2.
3.5.1. Sensory attributes
Attribute perceptions relating to good taste (significant only on
PLS-component 1 in France) and high quality contribute to a posi-
tive general image of TFP in each of the six countries, corroborating
the importance of sensory characteristics in traditional foods
(Caporale, Policastro, Carlucci, & Monteleone, 2006; Iaccarino, Di
Monaco, Mincione, Cavella, & Masi, 2006; Platania & Privitera,
2006). A good appearance is less necessary to generate a good im-
age, as it is a positive driver in Italy and Norway only. Consistent
quality is significantly related to the positive image of TFP in most
countries, except Belgium and France. It is interesting to observe
that consistent quality significantly impacts the general image of
TFP in Poland, even though this country gave a lower score than
Belgium and France to that attribute. This suggests that not neces-
sarily the most typical attributes of TFP, but rather the most valued
ones within each country, contribute to shaping the positive gen-
eral image of TFP.
136
3.5.2. Health & Ethics
Health & Ethics attributes do not create unanimity in the six
countries. Healthy is a significant driver of the positive image of
TFP in Poland and Spain only, and may partly explain why these
two countries scored the highest on general image of TFP. It is
interesting to observe that even though Italian consumers de-
scribed TFP as healthy with a mean score of 4.5 (Fig. 3), health per-
ception is not a driver of the positive image of TFP in this country.
This is because both Italians who have a very positive image and
Italians who have a less positive image of TFP may perceive TFP
as healthy. Similarly, safety is significant in all countries except in
Norway and France. We have observed above that consumers in
Norway scored highest on safety as a perceived attribute of TFP
(Fig. 3), yet it is not a driver of the positive image in this country.
This can be explained by the fact that the Norwegians perceive
Norwegian foods as safe independently of their general positivity
or negativity towards TFP. Further, high nutritional value and envi-
ronmental friendliness are drivers of positivity towards TFP in Po-
land only. This is coherent with the fact that Polish consumers
scored highest on environmental friendliness (Fig. 3). Last, Italy is
the only country where the attribute supportive of our local econ-
omy significantly contributes to a positive image of TFP. This is
consistent with the fact that in the scope of the same survey, the
Italians were found to be the most familiar respondents with Pro-
tected Designation of Origin (PDO; known by 95% of the Italian
respondents), Protected Geographical Indication (PGI; known by
84% of the Italian respondents) and Traditional Speciality Guaran-
teed (TSG; known by 34% of the Italian respondents) labels (Vanho-
nacker et al., 2008).
3.5.3. Purchase & Convenience
Attribute perceptions relating to time-consuming to prepare and
expensive unanimously correlate with a positive general image of
TFP in all of the six countries, indicating that consumers do not
typically spare their time and money when it comes to TFP. This
supports previous findings showing that traditional food consum-
0.6
0.4
Component 2 (X:6%, Y:4%)
0.2
Not time−consuming
to prepare
0
Inexpensive
−0.2
−0.4
−0.6
−0.8 −0.6
Fig. 5. General image of traditional food (TFP IMAGE) related to 15 product attributes in France. Statistically significant attributes are indicated in bold.
V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138
ers in Europe use a relatively high percentage of their income on
food and spend a long time making dinner both on ordinary days
and on special occasions (Vanhonacker, Lengard, et al., 2010). Con-
sumers with a positive image of TFP also perceive TFP as difficult to
prepare (not significant in France and Spain) and characterised by a
low availability (not significant in France and Belgium). An expla-
nation for the apparent contradiction between negative attributes
expensive, time-consuming and difficult to prepare and a positive
general image of TFP may be brought by the fact that traditional
food consumers consider making dinner as taking care of their
family (Vanhonacker, Lengard, et al., 2010). For these consumers,
more time and effort spent on preparing TFP for their family may
lead to positive feelings for these products. When it comes to
assortment, disparities are revealed as a narrow perceived assort-
ment is significantly correlated to a positive general image of TFP
in Norway and Poland, possibly due to a notion of exclusivity asso-
ciated with TFP in these countries, whereas a wide assortment is
significant in France, relating to the variety of TFP of daily
character.
3.5.4. Dual definition of TFP revealed by PLSR in France
In the model for France, two PLS-components are needed to
properly report the structured variation in the data against one
PLS-component only for all other countries. With the data from
France, a model with one PLS-component (12% Y-explained vari-
ance; cross-validation: 10%) identifies good taste, good appearance,
high quality, safe, supportive of local economy, difficult to prepare,
time-consuming to prepare, low availability and expensive as signifi-
cant drivers of a positive general image (results not shown). PLS-
component 1 may therefore be interpreted as the dimension repre-
sentative of consumers who define TFP as festive and/or seasonal
foods. A model with two PLS-components (16% Y-explained vari-
ance, cross-validation: 12%) reports ordinary taste, high quality,
time-consuming to prepare, wide assortment and expensive as signif-
icant drivers of a positive general image (Fig. 5). PLS-component 2
may therefore be interpreted as the dimension representative of
X−loading weights and Y−loadings
Wide assortment
High availability High quality
Easy to prepare
TFP IMAGE
Healthy Good appearance
Environ. friendly
Supportive economy
Safe
High nutrition Good taste
Consistent quality
Special taste
−0.4 −0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Component 1 (X:17%, Y:12%)
 V.L. Almli et al. / Food Quality and Preference 22 (2011) 129–138
consumers who define TFP as frequently-consumed foods rather
than specialty foods. This model shows that the drivers of general
image of TFP may depend upon one’s own definition of TFP in
terms of context of consumption: festive vs. daily foods. It must
be noted that this duality of consumption is present in all coun-
tries, yet comes out significantly toward general image only in
the model for France. For the other countries and for the pan-Euro-
pean sample, the general image of TFP relates to attributes typical
of festive traditional foods rather than traditional foods of daily
character. Moreover, it is interesting to observe that three of the
attributes remain significant in either context of consumption:
high quality, time-consuming to prepare and expensive. These are
also the only three attributes that significantly correlate to general
image in all six countries.
4. Implications and limitations
4.1. Implications for the traditional food sector
A measure of the general image of TFP revealed a positive gen-
eral perception of TFP across Europe, yet some of the perceived
attributes of TFP scored just above average on their scales
(Fig. 3). Accordingly, these results imply that there is a potential
for further image improvement and subsequent sales growth.
Based on our results, the following tentative suggestions may be
exposed. Firstly, the industry is encouraged to keep surfing on
the current high quality, high-value image of TFP which satisfies
quality-seekers. Secondly, the introduction of TFP with increased
convenience may appeal to new consumers. Thirdly, an enlarged
assortment may allow increasing sales volumes within the existing
consumer group, though notions of exclusivity are important for
some consumers. In addition, Norway may focus on developing
healthier TFP, such as low-fat and/or salt-reduced meat products.
Finally, the strong environmental friendly, supportive of local econ-
omy model from Poland may be exported to other countries, espe-
cially Norway and Belgium. This may perhaps be implemented
hand-in-hand with a further development and marketing effort
of local foods and PDO, PGI, TSG labelling.
4.2. Limitations in relating general image to product attributes
The current research was limited to a selection of 15 product
attributes drawn from the results of previous qualitative studies
(Guerrero et al., 2009, 2010). Only 9% of the variations in general
image were explained by the 15 attributes in the pan-European
regression model. That is to say that although the attributes that
are identified contribute significantly to explaining the general im-
age of TFP, these are far from enough to explain it wholly and fully.
Additional factors which were beyond the scope of this study may
also play a role in the general image of TFP, such as branding, guar-
antee of origin labelling (Caporale & Monteleone, 2001), manufac-
turing process information (Caporale & Monteleone, 2004;
Iaccarino et al., 2006), packaging, advertising and distribution net-
works (Vannoppen, Verbeke, Van Huylenbroeck, & Viaene, 2001).
In addition, referring to the definition of TFP in Vanhonacker, Ver-
beke, et al. (2010) we believe that TFP trigger consumers’ emotions
and values (‘‘. . .specific celebrations, transmitted from one generation
to another, gastronomic heritage, associated to a certain area. . .”)
which are not reflected by rational attributes such as nutritional va-
lue or price. Nonetheless, the attributes that come out significant in
the pan-European regression model have been robust to cross-
language and cross-cultural differences, respondent effects and
statistical cross-validation. This supports the reliability of the
findings.
137
5. Conclusion
This paper used information collected through a cross-cultural
survey in six European countries to measure the general image of
traditional food and to identify which attribute perceptions con-
tribute to a positive image of this group of products. It was re-
vealed that traditional food products benefit from a positive
general image in all countries with the highest scores in Spain
and Poland. Further, TFP present satisfying sensory, health and eth-
ical properties, but less positive purchase and convenience attri-
butes. Common to all countries, the positive general image of TFP
is significantly correlated to high quality, time-consuming to prepare
and expensive. Additional attributes contribute significantly to a
positive general image of TFP when the pan-European sample is
studied as a whole: special taste, good appearance, consistent quality,
healthy, safe, high nutritional value, difficult to prepare and low avail-
ability. Our results give evidence that European consumers trade-
off some degree of inconvenience in the purchase and preparation
of TFP in order to enjoy their specific taste, quality, appearance,
nutritional value, healthiness and safety. Further, results indicate
that not necessarily the most typical attributes of TFP, but rather
the most valued ones, contribute to shaping a positive general im-
age of TFP. Finally, our results also suggest that festive consump-
tions of traditional foods, rather than daily consumptions, are the
ones that most strongly shape the general image of TFP in the
European consumers’ minds.
The use of multivariate models has illustrated some of the mod-
elling and visualisation capabilities of these methods. PCA’s explor-
atory abilities were used to discover patterns in the attribute
perceptions of TFP, while PLSR’s explanatory skills were used to re-
late the product attributes to the general image of TFP. The PLSR
model for France allowed uncovering a duality in the respondents’
answers, which we would otherwise have missed out. In our expe-
rience, multivariate methods are valuable for the analysis of attitu-
dinal and behavioural data.
Finally, this paper contributes to understanding the general im-
age of TFP in Europe, and calls for confirmative and complementary
work by expanding the research to additional countries and to
other product attributes.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank TRUEFOOD (Traditional United Europe
Food) for financial support. TRUEFOOD is an Integrated Project
financed by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework
Programme (Contract No. FOOD-CT-2006-016264). The informa-
tion in this document reflects only the authors’ views and the Com-
munity is not liable for any use that may be made of the
information contained therein.
The authors are grateful to the referees for their comments and
suggestions.
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