Chinese Urban Consumers Segmentation Based on Modified Food-Related Lifestyle (FRL)

Western researchers have developed a food-related lifestyle (FRL) instrument for food consumer segmentation in the context of Western culture. However, in the consumer research of Eastern countries, such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Mainland China, the results showed that the FRL instrument was not completely suitable in an Eastern context. Food researchers considered that the FRL instrument should be modified in the Eastern context. Thus, the purpose of this research is to use the modified FRL instrument to segment Chinese consumers. There are 897 valid questionnaires, which were collected from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. After using the two-stage cluster analysis, Chinese food consumers are divided into five parts: uninvolved consumers (13.0%), health-concerned consumers (20.4%), adventurous consumers (13.4%), urban consumers (33.3%), and traditional consumers (19.8%). Significant differences of supermarket images are found among segments based on food-related lifestyle. The results showed that health-concerned consumers and adventurous consumers have higher evaluations of supermarket image, while uninvolved and urban consumers are dissatisfied with supermarket image. After segmentation variables are made, marketing strategies for supermarkets are proposed accordingly.