The Impact of Social Media on Millenials Food Preferences in a Plant-Based Environment in Germany.

Uhde, Mareike (2020) The Impact of Social Media on Millenials Food Preferences in a Plant-Based Environment in Germany. Masters thesis, Griffith College.

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Abstract

In this study, it is shown that German Millennials are partly influenced by plant-based food content on Instagram depending on their personal attitude towards food and an healthy lifestyle. Plant-based brands can have an impact on Milennial’s overall brand image by engaging their target audience with recipes and product recommendations and also when they cooperate with that have a more authentic and reliable image than the brand itself. The dissertation focused on exploring the Millennial generation in Germany, their usage behaviour of different Social Media platforms, especially in regard towards Insagram and how this is related to their perception of plant-based food brands. Today, social media has an important position in most marketing strategies and must be taken into account in all areas of the marketing mix. Many external factors in connection with product properties such as price, appearance or manufacturing process influence the perception of consumers, whereas social media offers the platform to communicate directly to the consumer and to convey product-related and natural messages. Millennials use social media mainly in their free time, where they are very receptive to latent advertising. However, this study shows that there must be a certain amount of interest in the plant-based topic in order for the content on Instagram to be visible to the user in the first place. Once contact and interest have been established, social media influences the consumer on several levels in different ways. The Millennials need of self-presentation in particular plays a major role on this platform. If the user identifies themselves with plant-based food and has built it into his lifestyle, he adorns himself with this content on the outside. Influencing those who are looking for inspiration rather than information focus more on individual content than on brand content when using content. This decisive factor, combined with the fact that the image-heavy platform encourages user emotions and commitment, shows how important the right visual language is in this context. However, this research does not give a uniform picture, seeing as the personal interests of the participants in regard to plant-based food diverge very strongly. The trend towards the importance of look and feel in a photo, however, is clearly evident and can be counted as a research result. The main problem that arises from this research is the lack of information and research that has been achieved in regards to the individual and the lack of in-depth research that could not be implemented due to the complexity of the researched target group.

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