A Cultural Hedonic Framework for Increasing the Consumption of Unfamiliar Foods : Soy Acceptance in Russia and Colombia

It is important to understand how a country's cultural influences may affect the introduction of a new or unfamiliar food. In this paper, we present a cultural hedonic framework that uses a culture's context (low versus high) and its view toward food consumption (hedonic versus utilitarian consumption) to assess the difficulty of introducing an unfamiliar food to this market. This framework is then applied to determine the most effective means to stimulate soy consumption in Russia and Colombia. General guidelines show how the cultural hedonic framework can be used to provide insights into distribution, message positioning, and marketing strategy for other foods and products in a variety of situations