A Study on the Effects of Health Functional Food Consumption Recognition and Purchase Distribution Pattern of the Elderly

This study is aiming to suggest baseline date for the establishment of policy alternative to make healthy consumption life of the elderly through investigating and analyzing actual condition of consumption related with the awareness of health functional food such as purchase behavior and consumer s problems about health functional food. Based on the results of this study, the implication suggested for marketing or policies are as follows. First, the elderly s awareness of health functional food showed above in order of the average health maintenance/physical constitution, diseases prevention, and harmful influence. The important factors to influence the elder consumers awareness of health functional food were the education level and the economic level(monthly income, monthly allowance). Second, the interest in elder consumers health functional food and diseases treatment were used by the female and subjects with low education level. The limitations of this study are as follows. First, the subjects were selected who live in Gangwon-do with the age of 60 and over due to the limitation of sampling, and that might be shown local characteristics. Therefore, the study result could not be generalized on behalf of all elderly in Korea and it is difficult to apply the result to more segmented market. To solve this problem, studies containing sampling by regional groups might be needed.