Search results

This paper aims to empirically investigate the role of product positioning in the launch of food and drink products using a large dataset of new product development by food companies in Australia (AU) and New Zealand (NZ). As such, positioning through credence attribute claims can be associated with product launch strategies, including brand-new products, expansion of product ranges, new packaging and relaunch, as a response to market demand.

Text analysis was used to investigate the descriptions of food claims using Structured Query Language, providing a word list of food claims and further filtered and categorised into groups of claims. Multinomial regression models were then employed to analyse the association between product launch strategies and food claims adopted by firms.

The results of this paper provide evidence that positioning via food claims play an important role in product launch strategies in both AU and NZ. Types of food claims matter differently to firms' product launch decisions in the two markets. The “green” and “ethical” attributes are found to be associated with new launches in NZ but not in AU. Claims that are seen as most important for consumers are more likely to be engendered for the more costly launch approach.

This study is amongst the first studies that addresses the role of positioning in product launch strategies of food companies. The results and findings provide insights into the different prevailing credence attributes from the firm side and help policymakers to regulate the delivery of information about credence attributes to consumers.

A model for analysis of consumer behaviour towards food is developed. This model is intended to bridge the gap between the objective quality approach pursued in food sciences, the product characteristics approach, and the subjectively perceived quality approach, the product attribute approach as pursued in the consumer behaviour literature. The focus is on the information processing by the consumer. Information on the product quality is supplied to the consumer in the form of cues received while shopping or consuming. A distinction is made between extrinsic and intrinsic cues, and between search‐, experience‐, and credence‐quality attributes. Within the credence attributes, three categories are distinguished: food safety, health, and all other credence quality attributes. It is demonstrated that public policy should use minimum standards for regulating food safety, information and consumer education on health issues and definitional standards to regulate the other credence qualities. In the case of search quality, no public intervention is needed. In the case of experience quality, reputation is a means of reducing the quality erosion inherent for experience quality attributes. In the case of those foods which are not sold prepacked over the counter, these means are restricted. Here the public regulators could consider backing up the private quality policy efforts on labelling by implementing traceability schemes and defining the requirements for specific label claims.

The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the direct and indirect effects of three credence labels (Australian, animal welfare and grass-fed) on US consumer attitudes toward buying beef steaks. Furthermore, it explores the impact of consumer attribute knowledge, usage frequency, education and opinion strength on the magnitude of direct and indirect effects.

Data are collected through an online experiment with 460 US consumers and analyzed with path modeling.

The Australian label generates a 86 percent negative direct effect vs a 14 percent negative indirect effect on consumer attitudes, which means that US consumers do not make strong inferences to form their attitudes toward buying Australian beef. The animal welfare label generates 50 percent direct and 50 percent indirect effects. The grass-fed label generates only indirect effects (100 percent). The higher consumer education, attribute knowledge, usage frequency, education and opinion strength, the weaker are the indirect effects of credence labels.

The study focusses on consumers in one country (USA), one product (beef steak) and one label across three attributes, therefore generalization of results is limited.

The study offers a tool to agribusiness managers as well as to policy makers, NGOs and consumer groups to design and assess the effectiveness of communication campaigns attempting to strengthen (or weaken) consumer inferences and attitudes relative to credence labels.

Despite the wide literature on consumer inferences based on credence labels, this is the first study that quantitatively disentangles the complex set of inferential effects generated by credence labels and explores common relationships across multiple credence attributes.

This paper aims to propose a framework model of belief consistency on the confirmatory bias theory, trying to explore the interactions between cues of credence-label structure and different controversial types of health foods, as well as the intermediary mechanism of belief consistency.

This paper presents a conceptual framework of belief consistency based on confirmation bias theory. The interactions between cues of credence-label structure and different controversial types of health foods, as well as the intermediary mechanism of belief consistency.

Consumers’ willingness to purchase varies under interactions between cues of credence-label structure (product-level and ingredient-level credence-label cues) and different controversial types of health foods (noncontroversial health foods and controversial health foods). In the consumption context of noncontroversial health foods, the presence of product-level credence-label cues causes confirmation bias, greater perception of health belief consistency and higher willingness to purchase healthy foods. In the consumption context of controversial health foods, the presence of ingredient-level credence-label cues results in the prevention of confirmation bias, lower perception of unhealthy belief consistency and higher willingness to purchase health foods.

This paper offers a significant tool for researchers to enrich relevant theories in the field of the conceptual framework of cues of credence-label structure. It also discusses practical implications for enterprise marketing and for the health and welfare of consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the variable of halal food knowledge (HFK) into the theory of planned behavior framework to investigate Malaysian non-Muslim consumers’ decision-making process in purchasing halal food.

Data were collected through 350 distributed questionnaires toward non-Muslim consumers on five most visited grocery stores (hypermarket-based) in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. The collected data was analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and SmartPLS.

Purchasing halal food remain an uneasy task for the non-Muslim consumers, thus rely on their personal evaluation and closest relative’s approval.

This study is focusing only on two halal food credence attributes namely health attribute and animal-friendly attributes.

Both health and animal friendly credence attributes of halal food should be the main message to be conveyed to the non-Muslim consumers. In addition, the inclusion of non-Muslim consumers within the Malaysian halal ecosystem might provide a solution to tackle the resistance of halal food from foreign countries.

The value of this study is the finding of halal food credence attributes of health and animal friendly, which are the dimensions of HFK.

Due to increased health concerns, restaurant customers rely more on credible cues that indirectly represent health-related credence quality. To comprehensively understand the dynamics between credence cues and restaurant delivery with different infection risks, this study aims to investigate changes in cue utilization during the pandemic.

Data on delivery sales, brand and review rating between 2019 and the first half of 2020 were obtained from Meituan. Fixed-effects estimation was used to investigate 579,858 restaurant observations across 338 cities in China.

Health concerns significantly increased the use of restaurant delivery and the increased delivery sales remained steady even after infection risk was reduced. However, cue utilization in restaurant delivery substantially changed depending on inflection risk. In the pandemic-spreading period, the sales effect of the brand increased while that of review rating decreased. The decreased effect of review rating was recovered in the pandemic-flattening period, whereas the abnormal brand effect continued only when branded restaurants had a high rating.

The findings demonstrate the selective and contextual nature of cue utilization in the restaurant delivery setting. These characteristics are also manifested in a health crisis from a credence cue perspective.

The findings demonstrate the selective and contextual nature of cue utilization in the restaurant delivery setting. These characteristics are also manifested in a health crisis from a credence cue perspective. Further, this study re-conceptualizes credence quality and cues, considering their roles in risk management. The findings help develop risk management strategies based on customers’ usage patterns of credence cues in health crises.

The dynamics between credence cues and restaurant delivery has not been comprehensively investigated, especially when infection risk changes. This study delivers theoretical and practical contributions about how to use credence cues in the restaurant business amid health crises.

This paper develops a conceptual framework, based on quality attributes and quality cues, to demonstrate the necessary requirements for effective communication of quality cues to customers in the supply chain and consumers at place of purchase. The “perceived quality” approach to product quality is adopted and the links between intrinsic/extrinsic cues and experience/credence attributes of a product are developed. The framework is applied to the UK meat sector by considering which attributes/cues are altered by farm assurance schemes and, hence, which type of cue is needed to signal these attributes, and what elements are necessary for effective signalling of this type of cue. It is shown that the necessary requirements for effective communication of each type of cue (intrinsic and extrinsic) vary considerably. Farm assurance schemes are shown to affect credence attributes; hence extrinsic cues must be used to signal these standards. It is concluded that the credibility of scheme standards and inspections to those standards is of crucial importance for the assurance scheme extrinsic cue (certificate/label) to be effective in predicting these credence attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare the factors which affect the consumers’ buying behavior of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food products in an emerging middle-size market. The paper also compares the preferences of the consumers for various food products and their respective market attributes.

A total of 282 households of two middle-sized cities of India were personally surveyed with a structured questionnaire. Simple statistical analysis such as frequency distribution, factor analysis and analysis of variance, and logit regression were carried out to infer the required information.

The results indicate that consumers consume more of vegetarian product than that of non-vegetarian products. Most of the consumers were interested in seeing and verifying the products of both of the categories before buying. Age and income of the consumers play important role in influencing their buying behavior for vegetarian food products, but not that of non-vegetarian food products. It was found that credence attributes of products, and market attributes play a dominant role in influencing the consumers’ behavior for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food products. Packaged branded products were not popular in both the food categories.

The localized nature of this study limits the scope of wider generalization. Future research could use larger samples spread across all regions having different food culture.

The findings of the study will be of help to food retailers who are interested to know whether the consumers’ buying process for these two categories of food products is more or less same or different in nature. This would help them to customize their product-specific marketing strategies as per the customers’ preferences and requirements.

The paper gives a comparative insight on consumers’ behavior toward both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. It provides specific reasons for having different or similar marketing strategies for two categories of food.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Indonesian Muslim millennials’ decision-making process in purchasing halal food by introducing knowledge variable into the theory of planned behavior framework and education level (EL; i.e. low vs high) as the moderating variable.

There were 400 questionnaires that were distributed to obtain responses from Indonesian Muslim millennials consumers. SmartPLS was used as the structural equation modeling approach to perform the multi-group analysis.

EL plays an important role that determines Indonesian Muslim millennials’ decision-making process to purchase halal food.

The EL was distinguished based on the Indonesian formal education system, which excluded the religious education system from the analysis.

The information conveyance of halal food product attributes should be conducted gradually according to the millennial consumers’ EL. Millennial consumers with higher EL are more likely to internalize the credence attributes of halal food compared to the lower EL counterpart.

This study found the significant differences in terms of halal food purchase decision-making between the two groups of lower EL and higher EL.

Online shopping is one of the most rapidly growing forms of shopping and provides a global shop window for producers who wish to sell and market their products. This paper seeks to investigate the internet as an alternative distribution channel for Irish producers of speciality food products.

Primary data collection involved consumer focus groups, a producer web audit, producer depth interviews and an e‐mailed online producer survey.

Consumers of speciality food appear to trade off the convenience and variety potentially available with online shopping for the sales experience associated with more traditional outlets, particularly speciality food outlets and direct sales channels. Nonetheless, the internet can be a significant sales channel for some speciality food producers with products of specific attributes, e.g. high value goods, and products with elaborate and gift‐oriented packaging and for those targeting consumers with previous purchase experience. For the majority of producers, the internet can complement other marketing channels and its role in managing information and relationships may be more important than online sales. Significant challenges exist for speciality food producers to use the internet as a significant sales channel.

The paper considers food as a category comprising a number of different types of products based on their search, credence and experience characteristics. It applies this categorisation to speciality food and examines the influence of these characteristics on the role of the internet as both a sales and marketing channel in Ireland. It uses both consumer and producer perspectives in the analysis.