Space food: For a few or for everyone?

Space food is a kind of food product created and processed for astronauts into space. It requires specific characteristics due to the extreme conditions of consumption. Previous studies have been mainly carried out within the fields of medicine and chemistry in order to deeply understand which nutritional aspects, chemical characteristics, and packaging can contribute to the provision of a safe and well-balanced product. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the marketing discipline has so far overlooked the opportunity to commercialize this product on Earth. The authors of this work have decided to develop a qualitative case study focused on the Italian aerospace engineering company Argotec in order to analyze which kind of transformations an innovative, elitist, and personalized product must undergo in order to be destined to a wider market. According to the results, consumers on Earth are not yet ready for such a product, hence the strategy to enter a new broader market would imply efforts that don’t ensure an adequate return on investment. However, the emergence of some practices such as space tourism could represent an important opportunity that should be considered in the future.