THE CONSERVATIVE CONSUMER

This paper examines the proposition that in marketing advanced technology and new products, the food manufacturing industry has to face the very substantial hurdles of a rapidly changing distribution system and an essentially conservative consuming population—a population in which there is a high degree of automatic behaviour in eating habits, and a universe in which the cost of innovation and communication is extremely high and the success rate, in terms of profit, extremely low. In addition, the food manufacturer has to face the hazard that advanced technology and organoleptic delight do not often go together.