The Impact of Socio-Demographic Profile and Product Identity on Functional Food Acceptance: A Review

There is a big demand for healthy food products by the consumer due to the increasing number of non-communicable diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, etc. Those kinds of diseases are usually caused by bad nutrition habits. that’s why functional food products which consider healthy food became one of the main research interests in both the health and food industries. In this article, we reviewed secondary data collected from journals and other relevant literature trying to find the influencing factors in the acceptance of functional food based on product identity and consumer demographic. Our findings reveil that the functional food novel is still well-unknown in the market and among customers, that’s why the influencing factor of acceptance of functional food is still not well determined. In addition, the acceptance of functional food seems to be conditional on educational level, gender, price, ingredients, brand, test, and health information. Our recommendation is, that functional food developmental research and manufacturing companies’ research and development departments, as well as their marketing experts, dedicate their resources to developing and communicating to attract customers who have not yet accepted functional foods as a part of their daily diet.