What attitudes does consumers have on purchasing genetically modified foods (GMF)?

transmittedally transfer (GM) pabulums atomic number 18 feed items that shed had their DNA changed through genetical engineering. (Mavis 2008). As the population of the world has continued to grow, the supply pressure of food has convey more than and more signifi atomic number 50t. With the exploitation of genetically Modified bio engine room, GM Foods have been come into our daily lives. Though GM foods poop benefactor to improve the quality of flavour, there atomic number 18 risks to complete trust in GM foods. Whats more important, a part of consumers pacify have doubts somewhat the understanding towards GM food.The question What military positions does consumers have on get genetically change food? is meaningful because that the issue about GM foods is get increasingly contr all oversial. The controversies towards GM foods generally think on environmental ethics, food security, poverty alleviation and environmental conservation. As customers atomic number 18 divided on their relative importance, some conducters claim that the GM engineering science put up solve the problem of food crisis and poverty. They as well as consider that GM foods are beneficial to environment such as they green goddessister protect fault and water.However, opp angiotensin-converting enzyments think that GM foods should have some potential threat to gracious health and they violate the rules of nature by mixing genes among different species. The nominate of this search is to gain a deep understand about the consumers attitudes towards acquire GM foods and find out if to the highest degree of consumers nominate suffer GM foods. (Hutchison, 2004) Literature surveil In the last few years, many articles on the consumers attitudes toward GM food have appeared. There is a concise review of make uping literature that adjudicates consumers attitudes as following.Most of the information on European attitudes comes from a diary by Bredahl, Grunert, and Sch honest-to-goder (2003). The article focuses on posted and answered quadruple questions on European consumers attitudes towards the use of GM food. These four questions are (1) how veto are consumer attitudes to the event GM engine room applied in food outpution? (2) How do these contradict attitudes affect the preference of consumer for GM products? (3) How pro primely does these attitudes rooted in customers opinion? 4) Will the new information and acknowledge change the customers attitudes? Bredahl, Grunert, and Scholderer (2003) believe that these four questions are central for understanding the consumers attitudes about GM food. The article use some tables to retrospect the consumers attitudes about genetic modification in food production in seven European countries which are the UK, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Nor bearing , Italy and Sweden. The info shows that about of the customer have shun attitude towards GM food, the aver get along with support for GM f oods is quite low.The national differences can too be showed through the table the attitude is most confirmatory in Italy, and is most negative in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, while Finland and the UK in a middle position. And the article in addition showed some other surveys to support this result, for example, the Eurobarometer surveys, which is a most well know one, have also shown that most of consumers do non like GM foods (Frewer & Shepherd, 1995 and Durant, Bauer & Gaskell, 1998European Commission, 1997, European Commission, 2000,)For the question how these negative attitudes affect the preference of consumer for GM foods, Bredahl, Grunert, and Scholderer (2003) have design a research about yoghourt. In general, consumers prefer the low-Fat yoghurt, but the yoghurt ordain become non-attractive consistency if they produced based on skimmed milk. Though victimization additives can improve this problem, many consumers dont like additives. However, by using GM e ngineering science, the yoghurt can be enough consistency, fat-free and no additives. It go outd a good basis for the consumer preferences.In the research, consumers inspected the three products which are practice yoghurt, additives yoghurt and labeled GM yoghurt and rank them according to preference. And they must(prenominal) explain the reason for the ranking. The result showed that most of consumer rank GM yoghurt to last choice. And the common reasons are that the GM technology is not familiar and not trus 2rthy, they dont know if the product is healthy, and it harms nature. The conclusion is declared the attitude to GM food has a strong square off on the preference of consumers. The third question and the last question were researched in another(prenominal) read.Respondents were asked to take part in a taste test of cardinal cheeses. Two weeks later, they enrolld in another taste test which only provides twain kinds of cheese. One cheese was the same taste as the one which defend the highest preference in the first test and it was labeled produced with genetically modify technology the other one was the some taste as the one which obtain a medium preference in the first test. The results showed that when the most popular cheese labeled genetically modified technology, the preference was reduced.So, the vignette shows the attitude on GM food is deeply rooted in consumers opinion and is not easily to change by experience. There are also some other important researches about consumers attitudes towards GM food. Hamstra (1995) evaluate the acceptance of consumers toward GM food through three studies of Dutch consumers. fruit characteristics and consumer characteristics are included in these studies. In the first study, consumers participated in a face-to-face interview about their attitudes and allow foringness to buy nine different GM foods (Hamstra, 1991).Means-end chain theory was used in the imprimatur study to promote research these aspe cts in some focus group discussions (Hamstra, 1993). The third study used the sample of consumers to evaluate the stumper which developed in the second study (Hamstra, 1995). As a result, the studies showed that perceived benefits have a great impact on consumers attitudes than perceived risks and there is no link between attitudes and knowledge of the genetically modified technology. Kutznesof and Ritson (1996) investigated Irish and British consumers attitudes through focus group discussions.The results divided the consumers attitudes towards genetically modified foods into three types triers, undecided consumers and refusers. A large number of consumers were classified into the second group, and the rest of consumers were equally classified as refusing or accepting genetically modified foods. through the research, Kutznesof and Ritson (1996) found that there are some factors can increase the acceptability of genetically modified foods such as perceived consumer-related benefi ts, price consciousness, increased product quality (especially the taste), and increased purity of products.They also found that the acceptability of consumers depends on the types of genetically modified foods the genetically modified technology used on vegetables, fruits and dairy products can be more acceptable than eggs and meat. more or less studies have analyzed consumers attitudes towards GM foods at a more in the main level. The attitudes of consumers have been proved to be more arrogant towards applying genetically modified technology to plants than to human genetic material or animals. Frewer, Hedderley, Howard & Shepherd, 1997) The study which established by Cook and Moore (2002) indentifies the relative importance, nature and strength of influences on newborn Zealand consumers intentions towards get genetically modified foods. The study used four methods to evaluate the consumers attitudes which are focus groups, the questionnaire, statistical methods and distribu tion. Results delivered questionnaires to 289 consumers and received 266. The respondents contain 171 females and 95 males.In the received questionnaires, 159 respondents had an intention or strong intention not to barter for GM foods, 27 respondents had an buy or a strong purchasing intention and 80 respondents had no intention to purchase GM foods. Through the analysis with Ordered logit analysis and Marginal effects for the extended model which related to self-identity, attitude, SN and PBC, Cook and Moore (2002) found that self-identity, attitude, SN and PBC can provide a positively influence on consumers attitude towards purchasing GM food.Males may more easily to feel in control over purchasing the food than females, on the contrary, females may easily to feel in control over not purchasing the genetically modified food. In addition, other related research shown that the New Zealand public may be slightly less against with purchasing GM food. A national survey about farmers attitudes found that 49% farmers not willing to purchase GM food and 12% farmers had positive attitudes to purchase (Cook et al. , 2000).Sallie and Michael, B (2004) choice copy methods to analyze in what conditions the Australian consumers are willing to purchase GM food, and they also discuss these preferences in the report. The results of the report suggest that if there has a cut on the consumers favorite food, they will have an intention to purchase the genetically modified foods. The report also showed that genetically modified technology which used on animals seems to be more unacceptable to respondents than that use on plants, especially among female respondents.In addition, another condition which can influence the consumers attitudes for a certain type of food is age of the consumer the results found that older lot generally more accept of genetically modified technology than junior people. In conclusion, the above literature shows that most consumers have the negative attitudes towards purchasing genetically modified foods, and these negative attitudes are not weak to change that can affect the preference of consumers.Furthermore, some conditions such as age and sex of consumers, the species that be applied with GM technology and the discount of genetically modified foods can also effect the consumers attitudes. Methodology The main method of this research is questionnaire which contains online questionnaire and a paper-based survey questionnaire. And the responds assumed to be truthfully. The online questionnaire will be designed on the official websites of large-scale supermarkets.And the links of questionnaire should also be sent to the email of the consumers who are the VIP or the stock consumer of these supermarkets. In addition, the questionnaire will not exceed 8 minutes. The questionnaire should contain unrestricted questions and close-ended questions. The sample open-ended questions should be Do you have a positive attitude or negati ve attitude towards purchasing genetically modified foods? Why? and How you access the knowledge about genetically modified technology.On the other hand, the close-ended question must contain the sex and the age level of the respondents, the questions should be designed like I have a intention to purchase foods produced using genetically modified technology ( precise strongly disagree, disagree, agree or very strongly agree) what do you think your family members or friends opinion would be when you purchasing genetically modified foods? (Extremely unfavorable, unfavorable, favorable or extremely favorable) Do you think your family members or friends opinion will change your attitudes towards purchasing genetically modified foods? Very strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or very strongly agree). These three questions are very important to understand the consumers attitudes towards purchasing genetically modified foods. The advantage of online questionnaire is that it is a less expe nsive way to investigate more people, and it can also investigate the people who are at a far distance. Furthermore, the questionnaire can be quickly through and anonymity ensures more valuable responses. But there are also some drawbacks about online questionnaire that must be foreseen.For example, in general, the responds to online questionnaire are from younger people and the response rate should be limited because that not everyone can access to the website. All these conditions should be considered on the result of research. The paper-based survey questionnaire will be sent to the consumers in supermarkets. In order to attract the consumers, the people who accept investigate can get a small devote as an incentive that can increase the participate rate. The age of participate range should between twenties and sixties.And the details of paper questionnaire may be same as the online questionnaire. The drawback of paper-based survey is that poor handwriting may be appeared on the space of open-ended question and some of them cannot be set accurately. Secondary research is also needed in order to support the evaluation about results of questionnaire survey. The secondary sources can be found in three areas sales report of a well-known company which produces genetically modified foods, customer database of this company and primary data.Newspapers, previous research reports, journal content, and government statistics could provide the primary data to secondary. The limitations of secondary research should also be considered during the process of research. For example, some secondary data may not be helpful to the research evaluation because that some data can be vague and general. On the other hand, the source of data must be checked in order to ensure the data is accurate. Moreover, the data maybe out of date.At last, the results of questionnaire and secondary research should be slang together to evaluate the respondents attitudes toward purchasing genetica lly modified foods and calculate if most of consumers can accept GM food. Conclusion There should be two results of this research one result is that most of consumers can accept genetically modified foods. It means as genetically modified technology becoming increasingly more oriented lifestyle, the consumers are increasingly familiar with the technology about genetically modified foods, more and more people can trust in GM food.The other result is that most of consumers cannot accept genetically modified foods, and the questionnaire can affect the reasons. It means people still have doubts about the safety and technology of genetically modified food. Genetically modified food is new technology products, though it still exist some problems, but with the development of science and technology, it will be more and more perfect. As long as follow the certain rules, life will be more superior with the healthy and orderly development of GM technology.