Master’s Degree in “Marketing and innovation” Final Thesis Food-bloggers: Do they influence customers’ food choices? Supervisor Ch. Prof. Christine Mauracher Assistant supervisor Ch. Prof. Finotto Vladi Graduand Daniela Fiorentino 871759 Academic Year 2018 / 2019 To my grandfather who has always told me: “If you must do something, do it well or do not do it at all”. Index Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 1. Food environment………………………………………………….…………4 1.1. What is food…………………………………………….………………………..4 1.2. Food culture…………………………………………….…………………….….5 1.2.1 Food as cultural heritage…………………….…………………………….10 1.3. Evolution and changes in food consumption….…………………...……………11 1.3.1. De-structuration and polarization of meals……………………………….12 1.3.2. “Time-saving” needs……………………………………………...….…..12 1.3.3. Price attention………………………………………………………...…..13 1.3.4. “Extra-domestic” consumption………………………………..………....13 1.3.5. Dietary convergence………………………………………………....…...15 1.3.6. Dichotomy pleasure/control and health/disease………………….……....17 1.3.7. Environmental attention and healthy lifestyle……………….…………...17 1.4. Social aspects of food………………………………………………………..…20 Chapter 2. Online environment…………………………………………………………27 2.1. Internet: birth and development…………………….…………………………..27 2.2. Community……………………………………………………………………..30 2.3. Social networks…………………………………………………………………43 2.3.1. Facebook…………………………………………………………………54 2.3.2. Instagram………………………………………………………………...57 2.3.3. Pinterest………………………………………………………………….60 2.3.4. YouTube…………………………………………………………………62 2.3.5. Flickr……………………………………………………………………..64 2.4. WOM………………………………………………………...…………………66 2.5. Opinion leaders…………………………………………………………………71 Chapter 3. Blog…………………………………………………………………………79 3.1. What it is? ………………………………………………………………………79 3.2. Microblog………………...…………………………………………………….87 3.2.1. Twitter……………………………………………………………………90 3.3. Food blog………………………………………………………………………92 Chapter 4. Food-bloggers………………………………………………………………97 4.1. Who are they? ………………………………………………………………….97 4.2. Birth and development: from blog to social network…………………………104 4.3. A new form of restaurant review………………………………………………108 4.3.1. TripAdvisor: food-bloggers main competitor…………………………..111 4.4. Influence in food choice……………………………………………………….113 4.5. Enterprise sponsor and food-bloggers’ credibility…………………………….118 4.5.1. Influencer marketing…………………………………………………....123 4.6. The importance of using images………………………………………………125 4.6.1. #Foodporn……………………………………………………………....128 Chapter 5. Empirical analysis………………………………………………………….130 5.1. Method and sample…………………………………………………………...130 5.1.1. Consumers’ profile: socio-demographic characteristics and dietary behaviours……………………………………………………………………..132 5.2. Hypothesis…………………………………………………………………….139 5.2.1. Results…………………………………………………………………..141 5.3. Market analysis………………………………………………………………..144 5.4. Consideration and limitations…………………………………………………152 5.5. The opinion of an expert: interview with Puokemed………………………….154 Conclusion and suggestions for future works…………………………………………159 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..162 Webography…………………………………………………………………………...200 Introduction This work aims at understanding the characteristics of food-bloggers and if they can influence dietary behaviour. The phenomenon of influencer, far from being an emerging trend, may be considered as a rooted reality by now. Influencers can affect consumers’ decisions by providing new trends or sponsoring products. They operate in various sectors and starting from social networks, they may expand their activity. Food-bloggers belong to the influencers’ category. They do not exclusively provide recipes but, they also suggest restaurants or products to buy, give advice about diet or food tendencies as well as be promoters of a brands or create partnership with companies. The connection that they create with their followers allows to distinguish their profiles from celebrities and makes them more reliable. They represent a new form of amateur professionalism that perfectly matches the food world with the online environment. Being understood the foregoing, before explaining in details the food bloggers’ characteristics, their evolution across time and the influence they have upon consumers, it is important to provide information about the two topics they refer to: food (the object of their work) and Internet (the environment they work into). Food is not only the “fuel” of human’s body but, it is strictly related to socio-cultural realities. The concept of “food culture” refers to the practices, attitudes, beliefs, networks and institutions surrounding the production, distribution, and consumption of food. So, it is possible to talk about food as a “cultural aspect” when a population operates on it and modifies its characteristics. Individuals share food and recipes every day, using food as a way to communicate culture and to keep relationships alive. So, if food is considered as a glue between generation and culture, food-bloggers represent a bridge connecting them. Through online channels they transmit information, give advice to their audience and share food across time and distance. A second aspect to highlight, it is the online environment in which food-bloggers operate in. With the introduction of the fist model of Internet in 1969 and with the creation of Web 2.0., the way thought which individuals share information has been completely changed. Web 2.0. allows to share information, to publish contents, to discuss and to communicate with third parties, to use technology in everyday life. The possibility of real-time communication, of information sharing and the connection among people across the world has increased, and web communities have growth in popularity. In virtual 1 communities, people electronically communicate and share interests and goals. The most common web communities are represented by blogs, social networks and forums. Social networks represent an emerging phenomenon of the last years: they have moved from a niche to a mass phenomenon. Throughout such work thesis, some examples of most known social network, such as Instagram, Facebook or YouTube will be explained. SNs are computer networks which socially and virtually connect people or organizations: each user interacts with other actors and each social interaction is represented by a node. A larger number of nodes shows a higher number of social interactions. Users, such as food- bloggers, who operate across various nodes are considered like influencers because their opinion can be spread across different groups. People have always exchanged information: the phenomenon of word of mouth (WOM) has be converted in eWOM, where the “e” stays for “electronic” because users spread information across the web. Due to the success of SNs, a lot of companies have decided to create their profiles, and at the same time, food-bloggers have decided to spread their activities through them in order to obtain a larger audience. On the other hand, a blog is an online platform allowing individuals to create a sort of “personal diary”. Bloggers talk about different topics, share opinions, experience or personal life. Due to the development of technology, they can communicate with a larger audience than before. Blogs give voice to “ordinary people”: food-bloggers are not professional of the sector; they are foodie and they want to share their passion for food. It is possible to find blogs about every topic so that bloggers who want to distinguish themselves from the mass should be able to be perceived as credible and trustful. Blogs and social networks will be analysed in details and further information on them will be provided here-below, such as communities, micro blogging, opinion leaders and WOM. Once provided and understood the main characteristics of these two worlds, the figure of food-blogger could be analysed. More attention will be focused on blogs because they are the first tools used by food-bloggers to share their passion. Then, food-bloggers’ characteristics will be analysed in order to understand what they are and why they are considered opinion leaders. Food blogs are considered a relevant source for food research, such as recipes, restaurant where eat or new dietary tendencies. Reasons why photographic elements are considered essential will be also explained, with a focus on the phenomenon of “foodporn”. Due to increasing number of “food-bloggers” present on the web, it is very difficult to distinguish who is reliable and who is not. They want to share their passion for food and use various tool to do that. Some of them consider their activity 2 as a pure hobby, while others want to use that as a springboard for their career. There are a lot of “food-influencer” who have started their activity on blog. To confirm this trend, it will be introduced a paragraph dedicate to one of the most known Campania food- blogger: Egidio Cerrone, alias “Puokemed”. Egidio has been interviewed to disclose information about food-blogging in general, his consideration of the role that food- bloggers should have and about the reasons and evolution of his career. When a food- blogger obtains great success is defined as a “food influencer”: for this reason, companies want to collaborate with them to promote their products. Information about food, online world and food-bloggers represents the basis of a market analysis aimed at understanding if and how food-bloggers actually influence customers’ food-choices. A survey has been provided to customers and spread online in order to reach a larger audience.