11/13/2005

Health Food Trend

With so many Americans suffering from heart disease, obesity, and other health problems, many are looking for healthier dietary alternatives. While, health stores, and other specialty shops can offer some better choices for the health conscious, many mainstream food companies are starting to promote their own health oriented product within the walls of normal grocery stores, and are very aware of the profit potential that exists within the health food market. According to this health article, the health foods market has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar industry, and food companies are eager to gain a share of this market. Aside from the issue of trends in healthier foods, I beleive offering a differentiated product can have the potential to bring about large opporunities for profit in business. At this point, perhaps consumers are slightly more inelastic when it comes to what they are willing to pay for healthier foods, but as more companies start to offer similar products, the price elasticity may become more elastic, demonstrating how a product can change from being more exclusive, to more of a comparable good, because of the emergence of many companies offering similar products.

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Morgan's post for spelling errors.

I think this is correct - what we are seeing is product differentiation and monopolistic competition leading to a grab for short-term profits.