Decomposing the (Seafood Versus Meat) Evening Meal Decision-Making Sequence: Insights from a Diary Study in Norway, Iceland and Denmark

Purpose – The evening meal is an important, regular event in the lives of many people and its daily practices lead consumers to develop habits that determine their food choices. The objective of the present work is to further investigate how consumers make choices by determining the stages as well as the content of the family's daily food (i.e. seafood and meat‐related) decision‐making process.Design/methodology/approach – Twenty‐four families in Denmark, Norway and Iceland were asked to fill in a one‐to‐two‐week semi‐structured diary regarding any thoughts they had about the decision‐making sequence regarding their evening meals. Data were analysed by means of content analysis so as to gain insight into the main themes and distinctive patterns with respect to the four stages of the decision‐making sequence by identifying a number of codes and sub‐codes of high and lower abstraction level.Findings – The main results were similar across the three countries. Planning was the most important phase of the even...