Future Scenarios of the Food System: Insights from the Consumers’ Perspective

Abstract

A careful analysis of contemporary society shows a radical evolution of the role and function of consumption. So-called post-modernity, along with the technological, economic and social transformations that have brought it on, inaugurate a different way of conducting relationships, of existing and of consuming. So consumptions evolve, assuming new expressions in extremely heterogeneous ambits, including that of food consumptions. The past decades have witnessed a progressive increase in the complexity of food consumptions due to the affirmation of increasingly more differentiated trends sensitive to territorial specificity and, at the same time, open to the globalisation of tastes. This topic represents a theme as interesting from the scientific viewpoint as it is decisive from the perspective of implementing food marketing strategies. In this framework, studying food consumptions and the sources that influence them in order to comprehend motivations and significances, implicates reflecting on and investigating into the way these practises can be the object of conditioning mediated by business communication, social practises and practises among friends, or by particular socio-economic conditions....