Using Twitter(R) as source of information for dietary market research: a study on veganism and plant-based diets

Social media has experienced rapid growth in recent years and has been subjected of discussions on a wide range of topics including new lifestyles and eating habits, providing a great opportunity to obtain spontaneous consumer information. In this sense, the present work aimed to understand the perception of Twitter(R)users about themes of veganism and plant-based diets. The social networking data mining methodology was applied to measure the relationship between both terms. The significant differences found were analysed using the global chi-square (chi(2)) test, and their sources of variation were investigated by the chi-square per cell. The results indicate that the vegan group's posts are more related to the categories of recipes, trends, criticism and negative comments about veganism, being more often citing sources when compared to the other group. The results of the plant-based diet group are more significantly related to the impacts of nutrition, physical activity and consumer health. In conclusion, Twitter(R)has proved to be an interesting tool for obtaining data on (re) produced food publications on social media and their results can guide the market and the academic environment in creating new products, services and marketing strategies to answer the needs of specific consumers.

Automated summary

This study aimed to understand Twitter(R) users' perceptions of veganism and plant-based diets using social networking data mining methodology. The results showed that the vegan group's posts focused more on recipes, trends, criticism, and negative comments, while the plant-based diet group's posts were more related to nutrition impacts, physical activity, and consumer health.