I wanted to know if the elderly people were generally active as if they aren’t this can make a change to the diet they need as they wont be doing anything to burn of anything like excess fat. Four-fifths of all elderly people aid that they were active so I now know that my product doesn’t have to be extremely low in fat unless it is a strict dietary requirement wanted by this age group. However, I don’t imagine that elderly people are likely to be as active as people of a younger age so I will have to monitor the fat content going into my product so that it is still something fairly healthy for them to eat.
I asked about whether they had any special dietary requirements because I wanted to know if my product would have to be specified anymore so. The majority of people said that they didn’t have any dietary requirements but some said that they needed low in fat and low in sugar. It may be a good thing that the people don’t have any special dietary requirements but maybe it could be ignorance about not knowing whether they lack any certain aspects of a healthy, balanced diet.
The size of the portion they would want is another important factor as I would not want to provide them with to little, leaving them hungry, or too much, putting them off eating my product again.
I am not sure what types of product my age group wanted so I decided to ask about the origins of the food they liked. A huge majority said that they preferred traditional food to anything like Indian or Chinese so I think that I will have to stick to that, as it seems to be what the people want.
I am not sure of what the gap in the market is as yet to see whether it is a main meal or a snack that is required so I asked the people this in my survey. No one seemed to particularly want a breakfast or a main meal, leaving it to be in-between a dessert or a snack. Snack got one more vote than dessert, which brings me to thinking that these are the two in which there, is a gap in the market for. If people want a desert and a snack maybe it is because they want a single portion sweet food.
Most people in my survey said that they would prefer to use a conventional oven instead of a microwave if my product needed heating. I think that I would make my product for a conventional oven as they are more widely used and sometimes the elderly people don’t know exactly how to work them, whereas ovens are always used.
Most people wanted a product priced between £2 - £3, which I think, is a reasonable price considering it is only for a single portion. The elderly often only have their pensions to live off so my product would not be bought if the price were too high.
I thought it would be useful to know what attracts a person to a product so that I know which area to focus on to get people to buy it. This was quite spread out and there wasn’t really much of a majority, which means that all areas of my product have to be good to suit all the different types of people because not everyone is the same.
I don’t think that gender really came into making a difference in my product, as all the options chosen seemed to have a mixed gender. The only thing that was noticeable was that men tended to want to spend less on the product than women and were the only gender that said that it was price that attracted them to a product!
