From Waste to Taste: An investigation of consumers’ evaluations of rescue-based food

In an era where resource efficiency and circularity are becoming the modus operandi, the societal problem of food waste, is a top priority on many national and international policy agendas. While food waste requires many types of solutions throughout the value chain, on the retail and consumer levels, rescue-based food (RBF) offers interesting opportunities to create value and capitalize on food waste. Rescue-based food (RBF) refers to food that is partly or fully made of ingredients that would otherwise be wasted, yet still fit for human consumption. It is a novel market phenomenon which offers a flexible, agile and scalable solution to food waste. Due to its ‘rescued’ past, it has an appealing value proposition that can save financial, environmental and social resources. At the same time, RBF is in fact conventional food ‘rescued from disposal’ and does not have many of the self-oriented benefits often associated with organic food (e.g., healthiness). It is in that sense a new product category which requires novel marketing approaches to create and retain its potential value in retail as well as in household settings. The present dissertation poses that both retailers and consumers can produce RBF. Organizations as part of their business activities or CSR initiatives and consumers as part of their leftover food management. The aim is, from a consumer perspective, (1) to show how RBF value can be created or retained in both these contexts and (2) by employing diverse methodologies and geographical samples, while addressing different stages of the customer journey, investigate how retailers and policymakers can harness consumers' desires to act in pro-social ways. This involves strategically positioning RBF to translate noble intentions into behaviors aligned with those values. The first three essays, focusing on retailers, reveal how specific product promotion and product transformation mechanisms can be deployed for enhanced RBF value creation and/or retention. The fourth and concluding essay delves into how consumers deal with leftover food as a self-made RBF. Specifically, it seeks to understand how coping mechanisms as self-designed interventions can help consumers to restore and create value from their food leftovers. While the first three essays primarily concentrate on the pre-consumption phase, with variations in proximity to consumption, the last project shifts its focus to the post-purchase phase.