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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Understanding the low consumption of pulses among French non vegetarian consumers : combining direct and indirect approaches to identify barriers and opportunities

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The objective of this thesis was to understand the barriers related to the consumption of pulses by French non-vegetarian consumers, by combining direct, indirect and implicit approaches.After showing that the social representations of consumers towards pulses are very different from those of professionals of the industry, we explored the mental representations, beliefs and knowledge about pulses among consumers. We showed that, even if the participants in our study had knowledge regarding pulses, they did not choose them frequently and associated them mostly with meat, which holds the central place of their meal. The difficulty of preparation of pulses seems to be a major obstacle to their consumption. Their level of transformation is another factor that has a strong influence on consumers’ mental representations.A study in a virtual supermarket showed that visual attention is different towards pulses and other food-groups and that the shelf in which pulses are presented influences the visual attention of consumers. We evaluated the influence of strategies to increase pulses choice in a virtual supermarket, using nudges and contexts that highlighted different buying motivations. We found a higher choice of pulses in some contexts. In particular, a motivation for the environment tends to increase the choice of pulses. Te strategy using nudges alone did not increase the choice of pulses. However, when these two strategies were combined, some participants modified their choices.A final study allowed us to compare the social representations of pulses for French and Spanish consumers in a cross-cultural context; it showed that some elements are shared in the representations of these two populations, while other elements are specific to a culture, and to the level of education of the participants.All these results enabled us to propose some recommendations for the industry, national authorities and the research, to help to promote pulses consumption in France.