About MAPP
What we are doing
At the MAPP Centre, we conduct research that generates insights into people´s perception and behaviour in the agricultural and food system. We study behaviour of stakeholders, customers, and citizen-consumers in the area of food, drink and related services and sectors, and develop implications for industry and public policy.
Why we do this
MAPP´s work is based on the belief that our research can contribute to food being pleasurable, healthy and sustainable and to connecting people, as well to ensure that food products are produced in a resilient, circular, fair and transparent food system. To that aim, we conduct research that improves market-orientation, innovativeness, and value creation in the food system. We contribute high quality and methodologically diverse social science research in interdisciplinary projects that provide relevance to society. Our three underlying values are 1) relevance, 2) interdisciplinarity, and 3) research excellence.
In short
MAPP is an internationally well-connected and renowned research centre located at the Department of Management, faculty of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University. It is an interdisciplinary centre with circa 25-40 affiliated researchers of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, focusing on relevant and impact-oriented research that generates insights into people´s perception and behaviour in the agricultural and food system. With over 30 years of experience, MAPP has a long track record of participation in research consortia at EU level, in the Nordics, and in Denmark, and experience in research both in collaboration with commercial companies and NGO´s or public actors.
Research topics
For industry, insight into customer behaviour is a major input in market-oriented product development and business strategy, which all companies, producers and retailers alike, strive for to ensure future competitiveness and creation of value for customers.
For public policy, insight into the determinants of food choice and consumption habits is an important basis for the development of policies that aim to address health, nutrition, well-being, diversity and sustainability.
To this aim, central research topics are amongst others motivation, perception and individual and group decision making, identity, social influence and social norms, nudging and choice architecture, information provision, commercial as well as social marketing, new product development and co-creation, technology perception and acceptance, retailing and branding, value chain design, stakeholder management and engagement, and sector transitions.
Research approaches
MAPP is rooted in the marketing discipline but has an interdisciplinary approach. In our research we draw from amongst others psychology, sociology, agricultural and behavioural economics, neuroscience, nutrition, sensory and food science, management and organisation, to name a few. Consequently, we apply a diversity of methods, where classical survey and interview techniques are supplemented by observational methods and non-verbal methods like eye-tracking and reaction time measures, experiments ranging from lab to field, scanner and panel market data analysis, or new methodological fields such as social media and virtual reality.
Relevance and impact need an interdisciplinary and holistic approach and cooperation across actors. That is why most of our research is done in collaboration with others. These are companies, retailers, trade associations, NGO´s or policy makers, and researchers in diverse other disciplines across all faculties, and nationally and internationally. We take a food systems approach and are bridging gaps between private-commercial and public-societal actors.
Most MAPP members are as involved in research as they are in teaching at all academic levels. The synergy created by the research-based teaching approach is an important strength: We constantly ground and update ourselves in both the basic and the newest theories and concepts for the teaching, apply and further develop these in relevant research, enrich teaching with state of art research methods and newest insights, and generate innovate ideas and new perspectives through the interaction with our students.
Making our work known
No impact without communicating research insights. Therefore, science communication and dissemination is a high priority for MAPP.
We communicate our findings to practitioners and stakeholders in the agricultural and food system. MAPP participates in consortia aimed at knowledge transfer and research implementation, organises own conferences and workshops, and highlights key insights and engages in conversation on these through social media. MAPP members actively participate as speakers and discussants in events or in interviews with the media.
MAPP publishes to academia in renowned international refereed journals through a portfolio strategy that provides a balance between cross- and disciplinary journals. We seek out journals with high impact and that take into account MAPP’s interdisciplinary orientation.
Our history
The name ‘MAPP’ is our organisation and brand name. However, MAPP originally stands for ‘Market-Based Process and Product Innovation in the Food Sector’. This was the abbreviation for the first project funding.
MAPP started in 1991 as a ‘framework programme’ under the first Danish research and development program for the food sector (Føtek I). It was meant as a novel way of integrating the social sciences into food research. Until then, the two major streams of social science work with regard to food were agricultural economics, with an emphasis on volume and price setting of commodities and how they are affected by agricultural policy, and the branch of food science working with sensory analysis, with an emphasis on how aspects of the physical product affect sensory perception and consumer liking.
It quickly became obvious that MAPP, with its marketing-rooted approach, filled an important gap in analysing how people react to food, since neither the traditional approaches in agricultural economics nor in sensory science could adequately deal with food products that were highly differentiated and where sensory properties, and a host of other parameters, interact in determining overall perception and liking.
MAPP’s work has over the years had a tremendous impact on both fields, with researchers in both agricultural economics and sensory analysis adopting many of the methods and concepts that MAPP has been developing.