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Abstract
In the last years, ethnic food has been successfully introduced in the Spanish market. In this research a
choice experiment is conducted in order to investigate consumer’s preferences toward ethnic food and the influence
of psychographic variables in consumer’s decisions. A nested logit model is employed for this purpose, with a two
level nesting structure: the first decision is whether or not to consume ethnic food at all; and the second decision
combines ethnic cuisine and the consumption situation. The experiment contemplates three cuisines, Mexican, Asian
and Arab; and three consumption situations: restaurant, take away and preparation at home. Three psychographic
variables are used to investigate the opt-out decision, which relate to the degree of food neophobia, ethnocentrism and
personal values. These personal traits are investigated by means of scales well documented in the literature that allow
the classification of consumers into segments. The results show that the probability that a consumer decides not to
choose ethnic food in any of the consumption situations provided, increases in the segments defined as relatively
more neo-food phobic, ethnocentric and focused more towards personal development rather than socialization.