Consumers' quality perception

Much has been said about food quality, and the disussion is endless because the notion of quality changes along with the changes in our life and society. This underlines the complexity of the issue of food quality. Today food production in Europe is highly concentrated, and the global market is rapidly becoming a reality. On the other hand, still many consumers are in favour of local production, resulting in fierce competition between the multinational suppliers and the local producers of food. Under these market conditions, the importance of skills relating to hoe to study consumers' perception of quality and the ability of producers to react to changes in consumers' perception of quality may form the basis of market success or failure, independent of whether you are a local or multinational producer. This chapter deals with the analysis of consumers' quality perception. We will introduce a general framework, the Total Food Quality Model, which we believe is useful in understanding consumers perception of food quality. We will then illustrate applications of the model using two recent examples of the quality perception of meat and fish.