How is Modernity Accepted by Consumers with Respect to Traditional Food Products? The Case of Traceability

Up till now, no researches have been done on consumers’ acceptability of new technical supporters of traceability, especially for traditional food products. Therefore, in the framework of the EU research project TRACE, we carried out focus group discussions, individual laddering interviews (with hierarchical value maps) and a choice-based conjoint experiment. Traceability is a fashionable word with different meanings whether it comes to producers or to consumers. The formers link it to technical aspects while the latter see in it a path for safe and good quality food products. How to intersect these two dimensions when advertising trend and consumer expectations are focusing on traditional food products? In France, consumers are familiar with the word traceability, however, they are not aware of the new supports of food traceability. They are still not ready for sophisticated systems and prefer the labeling ones. The more abstract the traceability support is, the more complex traceability seems to be perceived by them. Interestingly, we questioned consumers on traceability supports, they mainly responded on origin and label of origin as a simple way to track food products. This indicates that traditional origin labeled food products are considered as naturally tracked, while industrial products are perceived to come from a less identifiable source, and are better accepted with the guarantee of brand.