Factors affecting the extent to which consumers incorporate functional ingredients into their diets

The promotion of the natural functional properties of foods and/or the incorporation of functional ingredients into formulated food products is seen as a way in which to add value and to address consumer demand for foods that are perceived to be healthy (Chadwick et al, 2003; Verbeke, 2005). [...] In this model, the price of a product is (1) the sum of the marginal implicit value of the product attributes and (2) consumer demand is influenced by the level of attributes as well as the price and income. [...] The composition of the panel and the respondents to the current survey are closely representative of the City of Guelph, Ontario and Canada populations across a number of demographic characteristics (Table 1). [...] Three dummy variables were created for respondent age: age1 takes the value of one for respondents between 20 and 39 years, and zero otherwise; age2, which was the omitted variable for the age dummy variables, takes the value of one for respondents between 40 and 59 years, and zero otherwise; and age3 takes the value of one for respondents aged 60 years and above, and zero otherwise. [...] To gauge the economic significance of the variables, we report the marginal effect of each variable on the probability of consuming functional foods, evaluated at the sample means.