Chinese parents' attitudes and purchase intentions of children's functional foods

Introducing functional foods to new markets can be challenging. This is especially challenging when functional foods are targeted at children. This study investigates the factors influencing Chinese parents' attitudes toward functional foods and their purchasing intentions. As Chinese families are often multigenerational, we also explore the grandparents' influence on parents' decisions to buy functional foods. We draw constructs from the theory of planned behaviour and the health belief model. Survey data was collected in China from the parents of children 12 years and younger. We divided our sample into male and female samples. Our findings suggest that subjective norms and perceived benefits positively affect parents' attitudes toward functional foods, and parents' purchasing intentions are positively affected by attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived benefits. Surprisingly, grandparents play little role in influencing these decisions, even in multigenerational households. Our study bears important implications for marketers of functional foods for children in the Chinese market.