Summary and Outlook

Abstract

As a criterion of segmentation for public relations, diet-related uncertainty is of little use, particularly since such uncertainty has been described only incompletely at this point in time. In preparing the empirical study presented here, a hypothetical model was developed which systematises the reciprocal effects of diet-related uncertainty and the negative image of industrially produced food. According to this model, uncertainty results from dimensions of consumers’ market insecurity, product insecurity, environment insecurity, cognitive insecurity, motivational insecurity, personal insecurity, and insecurity about counselling and information. The definition of the phenomenon of consumer uncertainty is based on Kaufmann’s definition of the term “security”, who interprets consumer uncertainty as a saturation phenomenon of the highly industrialised affluent society.