Promoting millet mainstreaming among Gen Z consumers – a vignette-based focus group study

Purpose This paper aims to investigate awareness of the need for millet mainstreaming as a sustainability imperative among Gen Z consumers in India, post International Year of Millets (IYM) 2023. This paper joins literature that advocates sustainable food consumption of millets, to investigate the kind of advertising appeal that facilitates millet mainstreaming and adoption among Gen Z. Design/methodology/approach This paper incorporates qualitative vignette design into a focus group study among Gen Z participants. There were 100 focus group participants in 10 focus group sessions (10 participants per session) that included both students and working professionals. Two scenarios/vignettes were presented to each focus group, open-ended questions (based on the scenario) were appended to each vignette to examine two kinds of advertising appeals: self-benefit and other-benefit appeal in the context of sustainable food consumption. Findings Findings indicate that promoting millet mainstreaming and adoption is more salient to Gen Z consumers when the promotional campaigns are appearance-oriented and use a self-benefit appeal as opposed to an other-benefit appeal. Additionally, social media is the advertising medium that has maximum impact on this generational cohort. Practical implications This study examines the advertising appeal that influences sustainable millet consumption among Gen Z consumers and is conducive to creating an understanding of how marketing programs can be effectively used to encourage the shift to millet mainstreaming among Gen Z. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine the impact of the promotional activities of IYM 2023 on millet mainstreaming and adoption among Gen Z consumers in India, thereby making valuable addition to research in this domain. This study is also among the first to use the vignette technique to examine the kind of social media advertising appeal that facilitates millet mainstreaming and adoption among Gen Z.