JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Consumers are increasingly moving away from the traditional 3-meal-a-day eating routine, to a pattern where they are snacking throughout the day to fulfill dietary needs. Anything can be a snack, consumed anywhere, with anyone, and anytime, a trend known as “snackification”. Snacking depends on a variety of product-, context- and consumer-specific situational determinants, but consumers’ situational snacking behaviors have remained little studied.

Objective:

Our study aims to enhance understanding of consumers’ snacking behaviors, through exploring situational snacking behaviors given product-, context- and consumer-specific determinants over a longer period. As snackification is highly prominent in the Netherlands, and especially among Millennials (born between 1980-2000), Dutch Millennials were used as a case study to explore longitudinal situational snacking behaviors.

Methods:

This study, called FOODLOOP, studied the situational snacking behaviors of a cohort of 264 Dutch Millennials over the course of a year, through a time series structure. Data was collected on 12 non-consecutive days, divided over the 4 seasons, using the smartphone app Traqq, and following the principles of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). Participants were prompted 9 times per day to report all foods and beverages they consumed, and to answer follow-up questions for the snacks they consumed. Follow-up questions concerned the Food Choice Motives (FCM), physical context (location) and social context of each consumed snack. The temporal context (daypart, day type and season) associated with each consumed snack was derived from the smartphone-sensed date and time of consumption.

Results:

Averagely, 4.52 snacks were consumed per day, of which 64% more healthful snacks, including coffee, tea, fruit and bread products. Snacking was mostly driven by the Food Choice Motives (FCM) Liking and Appetite, as well as Hunger, & Thirst, Convenience, Weight Control, Health, Pleasure, Visual appeal, Habit, Sociability and Food Freshness. Most snacking occurred at home, with others, in the afternoon, and in spring. Dutch Millennials with children consumed more snacks than Dutch Millennials without children. Also, Dutch Millennials born between 1980-1990 consumed more snacks than Dutch Millennials born between 1990-2000.

Conclusions:

Our study shows that a smartphone app following the principles of Ecological Momentary Assessment is a highly valuable methodological tool to gather longitudinal data on consumers’ situational snacking behaviors. We demonstrate that considering situational determinants is essential for understanding consumers’ snacking behaviors, as we found that Dutch Millennials’ snacking behaviors differ across situations, given different product-, context- and consumer-specific determinants. Dutch Millennials’ snacking behaviors consist mostly of the consumption of more healthful products, at home and in the presence of others, but are not restricted to specific motives, locations, social settings or times, congruent with the snackification trend.