Objective:

To identify the behavioral and normative believes factors that might have major influence on the decision to buy packaged foods in urban Mexican families.

Materials and methods:

We performed a cross-sectional study in four urban cities of Mexico. Participants responded a self-administered questionnaire (n=3 340) outside of randomly selected supermarkets. A factor analysis was performed to identify what were the main behavioral and normative believes explaining consumers’ decision when buying packaged foods.

Results:

Three factors explained the behavioral beliefs: the quality assessment of packaged foods explained 61% of the variance, products that maintain weight explained 25%, and the emotional experience with foods explained 13%. Three factors explained the normative beliefs: expectations of children and partner explained 46% of the variance, expectations from the participants’ closest friends 23%, and expectation from other family members explained 14%.

Conclusion:

Behavioral and normative beliefs related to assessing the quality of foods and meeting family expectations respectively are the main beliefs factors affecting consumers’ packaged food purchase decisions in urban consumers.

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