Search results

The aim of this paper is the analysis of teenage consumers with varying degrees of healthy and unhealthy lifestyle habits and different healthy and unhealthy eating behaviours and food involvement, and its effects on packaging cues. At the same time, the paper tries to analyse the moderating role of gender.

With a sample of 589 (316 girls and 273 boys) young consumers (14–17 years old) and using SEM methodology, this paper tested a theoretical model related to the association between health, food, packaging cues and gender differences.

Among teenagers, healthy habits (sports) and healthy eating behaviours affect positively food involvement (p < 0.01 in both cases), and food involvement is positively related to informative packaging cues (p < 0.05). There are some differences between girls and boys. For example (1) there is a significant relationship between your consumers' sports activities and food involvement, and young consumers' healthy eating behaviours and food involvement. (2) More food-involved teenagers are those consumers that significantly read more carefully the packaging labels. Or (3) gender could be considered as a variable able to moderate the relationships between health and unhealthy lifestyle habits and eating behaviours, food involvement and packaging decisions.

The present paper tries to fulfil some literature gaps by developing a study with teenage consumers to solve three main questions/objectives: (1) Do healthy behaviours affect teenagers' food involvement? (2) Does teenagers' food involvement affect teenagers' packaging perceptions? and (3) Do girls and boys differ in their food packaging perceptions?

This paper sets out to investigate the factors affecting product class involvement for food. Factors affecting specific aspects of involvement are also to be explored. The aim is to determine the factors that affect involvement with food and sketch the profile of consumers more likely to be involved or not involved with food. This paper also seeks to assess the factors affecting the importance attached to different aspects of food such as taste, price, nutrition, ease of preparation, and brand name.

Building on the literature a conceptual model is developed and empirically tested using survey data collected from supermarkets in Athens. Data were analyzed using probit and ordered probit analysis and marginal effects were calculated which show how much the level of involvement or importance is affected when a variable is changed.

This study finds that younger consumers, those with higher education and income who engage in nutritional label use behavior and do not prepare food for their household are more likely to have low involvement with food. Less distinctive characteristics are apparent for the highly involved consumers. Different consumer profiles are also associated with different aspects of food involvement based on importance attached to price, ease of preparation, nutrition, taste, and brand name.

A caveat has to do with the localized nature of this study and therefore the limitations in generalizing results. Future research could use larger samples and other measures of product class involvement to test the robustness of these results.

The study suggests that overall involvement with food, based on attribute importance, is affected by several socioeconomic and attitudinal variables. The findings also suggest that different profiles of consumers can be associated with different aspects or attributes of food such as taste, price, nutrition, ease of preparation, and brand name. The analysis can be used as a segmentation tool that can assist marketing management with marketing mix decisions, and in particular with promotional strategy in order to increase marketing efficiency.

The paper gives new insights on consumer segmentation. It provides the profile of consumers more likely to be involved or not involved with food based on specific aspects such as price, nutrition, taste, ease of preparation and brand name.

Considering the importance of involvement in experience, this paper aims to understand what factors lead to enduring involvement and how this type of involvement influences the food experience of tourists in the restaurant context.

Twenty tourists who had a dining experience in the restaurants of Queenstown, New Zealand were interviewed using the purposive sampling method.

Using manual coding, 11 factors were found to contribute to enduring involvement. The findings also showed that enduing involvement influenced the food experience of tourists in a positive way including four consequences.

The research is limited to the restaurants of a specific destination and the findings should be generalised with caution. It, however, contributes to the existing research on involvement and experience in the hospitality and tourism literatures.

The findings provide guidelines on how restaurateurs understand the tourists’ perceptions and evaluations of their offerings to improve the dining experiences and manage their businesses effectively.

Previous research has not offered an understanding of what factors contribute to enduring involvement in the hospitality and tourism literatures and how this involvement impacts dining experiences of tourists.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the moderating effect of consumer involvement level in the influence exerted by perceived quality on consumer perceived risk, trust, satisfaction and loyalty. The paper seeks to conduct this analysis for a protected designation of origin (PDO) food product, the cured ham “Jamón de Teruel”. This analysis aims to distinguish perceived quality in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes of PDO.

Data were obtained using a structured questionnaire. Specifically, consumers were asked to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements based on a seven‐point Likert scale. After completion of fieldwork, an analytic process (exploratory and confirmatory reliability analysis) was performed to obtain 441 valid questionnaires. A multi‐sample model was applied to analyse the effect level of consumer involvement in the proposed model.

The results suggest that the influence of quality attributes on consumers' perceived risk, trust, satisfaction and loyalty is substantially different between consumers with a high involvement level and consumers with low involvement. In addition, substantial differences were also found in the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic quality attributes on the model being analysed. The results of the analysis show that for the group of highly involved consumers the influence of both intrinsic and extrinsic perceived quality on the consumers' loyalty level is clearly higher.

Managers of PDO food products need to understand how consumer involvement level regarding their products influences consumers' decision‐making processes. Thus, PDO managers should take advantage of the situation that those highly involved consumers in this kind of product are more receptive to their advertisements. Moreover, promotion of PDO food products based on the quality, tradition and know‐how of certain brands may make the consumer reach higher attention levels in an easier manner, so that their loyalty levels towards the brands will be reinforced.

The paper analyses the moderating effect of consumer involvement of a traditional PDO food product. There is a lack of literature that focuses on the influence of consumer involvement of food products in consumer behaviour patterns. The paper tries to advance this important research line.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the role of gender, food health involvement, and food health information competency in predicting consumer food health information seeking.

A conceptual model for predicting consumer food health information seeking is proposed. The predicting constructs are general food health involvement, general food health competency, product‐specific health involvement, and product‐specific food health competency. The relationships between construct are estimated using structural equation modelling. Data were collected in a nationally representative consumer‐panel among 504 Danish consumers using a questionnaire.

The results suggest that improving consumers' general food health involvement may only lead to increased product‐specific health information seeking if consumers at the same time are involved in the specific product category. The results also revealed that women are generally more food health involved than men but did not support previous research suggesting that women also are more knowledgeable about healthy food and that they more often seek product‐specific food health‐related information.

This research concentrated on analysing one food product, salad dressing. A large cross‐section of products ought to be studied to improve the generalizability of the obtained result and thus future research may wish to incorporate a wider range of food products.

The results suggest that food authorities and/or food marketers seeking to promote a healthy life‐style should consider providing examples of healthy product categories (food authorities) and/or particular products (food marketers) along with their general health information.

This paper empirically investigates gender along with a number of mental constructs for the purpose of understanding consumers' food health information seeking. Also, the paper explores age and educational level as possible moderating variables of the consumer food health information seeking process.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of involvement in food preparation on estimated calorie content, perception of portion size and desirability of the food item.

To test the hypotheses, three between-subjects experiments (one online, two in a laboratory setting) were conducted. Across the three experiments, participants were presented with a food item either ready for consumption (low involvement) or with the individual ingredients in need of assembly prior to consumption (high involvement).

Results showed that when a consumer is involved in the preparation of their food, they perceive the food to be lower in calories and smaller in portion size than when the same food is presented fully prepared and ready-to-eat. In addition, the effect of food preparation involvement on perception of portion size has negative downstream consequences on food desirability, as a smaller perceived portion resulted in a less desirable food item.

To the authors’ knowledge, the results of this research are the first to focus on the impact of preparation involvement on perceptions of the specific product attributes of calorie content and portion size, and the downstream effect on desirability.

The purpose of this study is to examine how food neophobia, food involvement, tour guide performance and intention of local food consumption impact each other.

A survey was performed with a sample of international tourists visiting Antalya, Turkey, and the data were used to test the proposed research model by means of structural equation modelling.

Results reflected a causal relationship among the examined constructs. Although tour guide performance had an insignificant effect on food neophobia, tourists’ food involvement negatively impacted and decreased neophobia.

This study is an exceptional contribution to the literature, as it empirically investigates the role of tour guides on tourists’ local food consumption behaviour.

This study aims to explore the relative effectiveness of a human celebrity endorser vis‐à‐vis a fictional celebrity or character endorser on teenage consumers' attitudes. Further, the study also seeks to assess whether the effectiveness varies depending on the nature of the product being endorsed.

Given the purpose of the study, experimental design was used as the research methodology. In an experimental set‐up three product categories (low‐involvement food/low‐involvement non‐food/high‐involvement) and two endorsers (human celebrity/fictional celebrity) and a control group were deployed in a 3×3 full factorial design on 378 teenagers. Fictitious advertisements were used as stimuli.

The study suggests that, for food and non‐food low‐involvement product categories, the impact of a human celebrity is more than that of a fictional celebrity. Regarding the purchase intentions of teenagers, it was found that a human celebrity is more effective than a fictional celebrity in food and non‐food low‐involvement products. In the case of the high‐involvement product, the human celebrity was not found to create favorable consumer attitudes.

The study results suggest that celebrity endorsements are useful, but the nature of the product also has an influence on success. One limitation of the study was the restriction to print advertisements.

A major implication from the findings for the managers is that a human celebrity may not always be the right choice for any product promotion for teenagers. More specifically, for high‐involvement products, celebrity endorsement needs to be handled with caution since it may not prove to be successful.

The contribution of the study is in addressing an area that has not been very well researched as yet, and in addressing a research question that has not been investigated properly.

The importance of packaging design as a vehicle for communication and branding is growing in competitive markets for packaged food products. This research utilized a focus group methodology to understand consumer behavior toward such products and how packaging elements can affect buying decisions. Visual package elements play a major role, representing the product for many consumers, especially in low involvement, and when they are rushed. Most focus group participants say they use label information, but they would like it if simplified. The challenge for researchers is to integrate packaging into an effective purchasing decision model, by understanding packaging elements as important marketing communications tools. Propositions for future research are proposed which will help in developing better understanding of consumer response to packaging elements.

Health apps offer a potential approach to support healthier food behaviours but a lack of sufficient engagement may limit effectiveness. This study aims to use a user engagement theoretical lens to examine the factors that influence app engagement over time and may prompt disengagement.

A phenomenological exploration of the lived experience was used. Women from a lower socioeconomic background (based on the occupation and employment status of the household’s primary income earner) were randomly assigned to use one of two apps for a minimum of eight weeks. Multiple data collection methods, including accompanied shops, researcher observations, interviews, participant reflective accounts and questionnaires, were used at different time-points to examine engagement. Theoretical thematic analysis was conducted to explore the engagement experience and relevant social, personal and environmental influences.

Healthy food involvement appears to drive app engagement. Changes in situational involvement may contribute to fluctuation in engagement intensity over time as the saliency of personal goals change. Negatively valenced engagement dimensions may contribute to the overall expression of engagement. A lack of congruency with personal goals or an imbalance between perceived personal investment and value was expressed as the primary reasons for disengagement.

Situational involvement may act as a trigger of different engagement phases. There is a need to better distinguish between enduring and situational involvement in engagement research.

Individual characteristics may shape engagement and propensity for disengagement, which highlights the practical importance of incorporating tailored features into app design.

Findings broaden the current conceptualisation of engagement within the digital space and prompt a reconsideration of the role of situational involvement and negatively valenced dimensions throughout the engagement process.