Consumer perception of bread quality[Vnímanie kvality chleba spotrebiteľom]

The aim of this paper is to evaluate consumers' perception of bread quality in Slovakia. Bread belongs to essential foodstuffs and we all have it served on our table every day.Cereal products keep their importance in people's nutrition mainly because of their preventive effects on health. They saturate about 40 % of the daily energy need of an average European, who in average acquires from cereals about 30 % of proteins, vitamin B1, niatin and phosphorus, around 1/6 of fats (out of it 19 % of linol acid), almost 60 % of saccharides, 1/4 iron and about 13 % of vitamin B2 and calcium. If we add some cereal fiber which is an effective prevention factor of cardiovascular diseases, metabolic and oncological diseases of colon and anus, we will get a complex picture about positive effects of cereals in our nutrition. If we were to mark any foodstuff which has been accompanying the mankind in the course of history, it could be bread. Its consummation is spread in the whole world. Only the ones who once suffered from its lack have recognized its value.It results from our research that consumers in Slovakia prefer consuming the wheat-ray bread (38.5 %). The respondents - consumers prefer at choosing buying bread in terms of the external, subjective factors, the overall shape when choosing bread (45 %) and dark color of crust (25 %). They showed minimum interest in white color crust and packaging size. In terms of the internal, objective factors, the most important factor for respondents, for women as well as for men was freshness of foodstuffs followed by fiber (with a big difference) (12.82 %).Almost 60 % of bread consumers claimed that they did not have any possibility to obtain the required information regarding bread in supermarkets and hypermarkets because it is not possible to find professional staff providing them with the required information. A different situation is in the classical, small, self-service, and specialized stores, where personal contact of a shop-assistant and a customer is more often. Results of the performed marketing research of consumer behavior in the market with bakery products will become a sort of the initial basis for departments involved in the research. The team of co-authors have the task to define bread quality on the basis of chemical analyses in accordance with consumers needs.