Author(s): Masih, J., & Joshi, A.
‘Health-food’ is a health marketing term used for suggesting consumers, the specifically designed healthy diet for high nutrition and body growth. A health-food mainly includes organic food, natural and non-GMO foods, special foods of allergic people like gluten-free, lactose-free and dairy-free products and low fat-high protein keto diet products such as beans, legumes, nuts and seeds. Food consumption patterns of ‘health-foods’ and their preferences are constantly changing all over the world, due to change in urban-lifestyle patterns leading to high stress, anxiety and health related diseases like diabetes and obesity etc. In today’s time “Eating healthy and living healthy” is a most acceptable mantra for living a good life. According to the global health and wellness food market report, it is expected that during 2020-2024, the size of the health and wellness food market is likely to rise by US$ 235.94, advancing at a CAGR of 6 percent. Organic and gluten-free foods are considered to be on top when talking about the health-foods. There is need to further explore the mindset of consumers regarding health-foods and their consumption, since its benefits looks promising but very little is known about the consumers’ beliefs, motivations and values driving their decision in making the purchase of these foods. Various researches indicates that a better understanding of consumers' perception of health foods are the main factors for market positioning,growth and for negotiating market opportunities. Main objective of the paper is to understand the perception of consumer using Big Data analysis so as to assist health food manufacturers to improve food products according to customer choices and preferences. In this chapter, by using social media metrics such as Twitter , Facebook, blogs, posts, and reviews that have played a major role in increased sales of health foods, we will primarily concentrate on understanding the public perception regarding organic and gluten-free foods. The chapter will also provide in-depth insights about health-foods in form of positive, negative and neutral sentiments of the consumers using the social media data from Talkwalker and Google Trends. This research would be a big opportunities for production houses as it would drive decisions and improve marketing return on investment .It may also give insights into well-designed products and offers that is preferred and cherished by customers along with delivering the desired products and offers effectively to the marketplace. The results of the chapter would show the 'most talked about' and anticipated product innovation in health-food sectors such as snacks, fast food (pizza, pasta and noodles) and desserts via social media comments. The study is unique since it combines big data to the niche market of organic foods to draw the valuable consumer preferences using online platforms.