The horse meat market in France: towards a typology of consumers and non-consumers

Hippophagy, historically fragile in France, is currently declining significantly, as the consumption of horsemeat has been divided by 8 over the past 40 years. In 2019, the average consumption of horse meat in France was 0.1 kg per capita per year. Only 4% of French households bought horse meat at least once a year, which represents around 6 million people. Nevertheless, it seems to exist a substantial potential to develop this market. First, this meat has many nutritional, organoleptic and environmental qualities. Second, our initial work showed that approximately 15% of the French population that not currently consume horsemeat would represent potential consumers. For these people the reasons given for non-consumption are mainly related to the availability and visibility of the offer. In this context, our research aims to understand the French horse meat market and to study the determinants of its consumption. Specifically, the goal of this communication is to shed light on different profiles of consumers and non-consumers of horse meat. Results are based on a quantitative survey among 493 meat consumers in France, analysed through clusters analysis. They underline for all respondents a lack of knowledge about the product and access difficulties. Data allow us to distinguish 4 classes of individuals: the ‘reluctant', the ‘distant', the ‘amateur', and the ‘potential'. The two first types show a low level of acceptability towards horse meat, the ‘reluctant' because of a strong moral opposition, the ‘distant' because of a globally distant relationship with meat in general. The ‘amateur' and ‘potential' individuals show characteristics that are favourable to horse meat consumption, which could be improved through a better availability and visibility of the offer for the ‘amateur' group, and thanks to the development of the offer in restaurant to encourage the ‘potential' group to discover the product. Targeted managerial strategies can be proposed and discussed in light of these results, differentiating non-priority or priority customer targets.