Exploring sustainability patterns in household food purchasing

: a data analytics approach

Abstract

At a time when global environmental challenges are pressing and consumer options are more diversified than ever, there is an urgent need to integrate sustainable practices with the growing availability of food items that may not always be beneficial to healthy living. This work describes a critical step in using food retailers’ data to turn complicated consumer interactions into meaningful insights. This initiative seeks to find opportunities to support more environmentally friendly and nutritionally healthy consumer choices by strategically analysing consumption habits. This thesis used a complex approach to data cleansing, which included a variety of standardisation and normalisation procedures to match diverse data structures and formats. The outcome of these efforts was the merging of three data tables, which converged to form an integrated data table that not only contained a retailer's product offerings, but also included the complete nutritional information and calculated environmental implications of each product. An important methodological highlight is the classification of clients into three unique segments based on macronutrient and micronutrient consumption, as well as environmental effect. This three-dimensional categorization is crucial, as it gives a full consumer profile and enables for a detailed knowledge of consumption behaviours across three important dimensions. This thesis lays the framework for future research on the sustainability and nutritional effect of consumer behaviours. It uncovers critical information that might drive policy decisions targeted at directing household consumption towards more sustainable and healthier results by segmenting consumer data in great detail.

Date of Award	12 Jul 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Vera Lúcia Miguéis Oliveira e Silva (Supervisor) & Joana Margarida de Melo Correia Bôto (Co-Supervisor)