FOOD AND BEVERAGE MODERNITY IN THE SEGMENT OF CAPSULE MACHINES: A STUDY BASED ON THE MEANS-END THEORY

Abstract

Contemporaneity has generated significant changes in food/human relations. The way food is perceived has been modified, and a new concept has emerged: the food modernity. People’s needs and goals are represented cognitively through values, understood here as final states that consumers aim for themselves. This qualitative and exploratory research aimed to identify, under the perspective of the means-end theory, the relationships among the attributes, consequences, and values that motivate the consumption of coffee capsule machines. Laddering was used as a technique, since it allows more excellent representation of information and aggregated relations to the consumers’ perception, and the results were arranged in a hierarchical map of values. With the help of the software LadderUx, we
reached the matrix of implication and the hierarchical value map. Results showed that it is not the technology that modifies individuals’ eating habits, but rather the relationships triggered by the modernity concepts. The transformations that occurred worldwide have changed peoples’ lifestyles. In this context, the technology used in capsule machines contributes to the new modes of food consumption, through utilitarianism, quality, practicality, and the artifact itself (capsule machine).