Search results

Food packaging pictures are one of the most important extrinsic cues for consumers to evaluate food products before purchasing. Over the past decades, marketers have used exaggerated pictures to attract consumers' attention, enhance their attitude toward a product and increase their purchase intention. This study examined the interplay of “puff-up” product picture, food type and picture type in influencing consumers' responses via persuasion knowledge.

The research comprises two 2 × 2 factorial experiments. Study 1 tested the interaction effect of puffery (high vs low) and food type (utilitarian vs. hedonic) on consumers' responses using two fictitious brands of prepared food, whereas Study 2 tested the interaction effect of puffery (high vs. low) and picture type (ingredients vs. cooked food) using a fictitious brand of Chinese delicacy.

Results demonstrated that the degree of picture puffery did not influence consumers' responses to utilitarian food and ingredient image. Conversely, consumers were sensitive to puffery when they see hedonic food and cooked-food image. Our findings also suggested that consumers' persuasion knowledge mediates the relationship between puffery and their responses.

The presented findings facilitate marketers to know consumers' attitude about food puffery pictures.

This research is one of the first efforts to empirically explore the influences of persuasion knowledge on food puffery pictures. The importance of this work is underscored by the fact that a growing number of visual exaggerations are adopted on food packaging.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market structure and level of competition in health and wellness food products by type, category, prime positioning and distribution networks in India.

The study is conducted using secondary data from Euromonitor International. Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) has been calculated for analyzing the market trends in terms of type, category and prime positioning and market competition has been analyzed using Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). Analysis of variance has been used for analyzing the statistical difference in market competition.

Consumer purchase behavior for food is significantly changing across the world and consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the health enhancing properties of food. With growing incidences of problems like obesity, diabetes, coronary heart diseases and foodborne diseases, consumers are becoming aware of the role of food in ensuring health and well-being. There have been significant structural changes in the health and wellness food market compositions and India has huge market potential for health and wellness food products with a market size of Rs. 435 billion in 2013 and growing at a significantly high annual growth rate of about 13.8 percent during 2002-2013. HHI results clearly indicate that there is significant competition in the health and wellness food market with average HHI of 0.19. However, the structure of market competition shows a varied trend across the types, categories, prime-positioning and distribution channels of health and wellness food products.

Results of the study provide a better understanding of temporal as well as intra-category changes in market size of health and wellness food products and the competitiveness of the health and wellness food market, providing valuable insights to the companies involved in producing and marketing of health and wellness food products in India.

Health and wellness food market is an emerging area for the marketer and there are limited analysis on market structure and competition.

This paper aims to examine consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions toward foods labeled as containing genetically modified (GM) (transgenic) ingredients across plant and animal-based categories. In light of marketplace changes (i.e. labeling requirements), we explore behavioral measures based on labeling options.

Three studies, one online projective survey using a convenience sample of consumers and two experiments conducted with Amazon mTurk adult US participants, are included.

Consumers have negative associations with GM products vs non-GM and are more likely to purchase unlabeled GM products. GM products may offer positive economic, societal and environmental benefits. However, the need for labeling overshadows these benefits and presence of GM labeling increased avoidance. Furthermore, changes in product opinion mediate consumers’ purchase intention and willingness to pay.

GM labeling negatively influences consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions. This is important for legislators and marketers concerned with counter-labeling effects (e.g. Non-GMO Project Verified).

Debates on efficacy of labeling, inclusion disclosure of ingredients, short-term risks and long-term implications are ongoing globally. Consumer reception and purchase intention can only be changed through governmental and corporate transparency.

Widespread misinformation about GM foods, presence in our food supply, impact on health, economy, environment and the marketplace still exists. The findings reflect consumers’ responses to changes proposed by the 2016 National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard legislation.

With the paucity of research on consumer response to the release of a GM animal product into the food supply, this work breaks new ground as the first to examine the impact of disclosure of GM animal-based food type.

This research investigates the changes in the types of advertised food products and the use of nutritional versus consumer appeals in children’s advertising from 2000 to 2005.

Content Analysis.

Results indicate that food processors and restaurants have not changed their advertising messages to children in response to the multitude of pressures the industry is facing. Specifically, this pre‐post longitudinal comparison shows no significant change regarding types of food products advertised and type of appeals used in the ads directed to children.

Limitations include the sample studied. While the ads recorded all came from television programming aimed specifically at children, there was no specification or ability to classify the consumers according to the age of the viewer. Additionally, duplicate exposures of the ads were not included in the study.

Obesity is a serious and expanding concern for our children’s health. As past advertising research and socialization theory suggest, children’s exposure to advertising has impact. It is important to monitor changes in food advertising to children in the future to ascertain whether and to what extent food companies are able to change both what they advertise and the appeals they use to gain consumers’, in this case, children’s attention.

This study provides a useful baseline (prior to 2001) and benchmark (post 2001) to longitudinally examine the food product and appeal usage in food advertising directed to children. This will be useful information for advertisers, for parents, for regulators and for special interest groups, all of whom have a common goal – healthy kids.

This paper aims to examine the effect of proximal (versus distant) depiction of food products within an advertising or online context on consumer responses across food types (indulgent versus non-indulgent) and display formats that lead to a single exposure (e.g. billboard) versus multiple exposures (e.g. online menu).

Five experimental studies, using both implicit and explicit elicitation techniques, demonstrate the effect of proximal food depictions. The paper rules out alternative explanations (portion-size perception and participants’ bodily distance) and controls for several other factors (e.g. visual crowding, body-mass index, dietary restrictions, etc.)

The studies find that proximal food pictures are implicitly associated with tastiness more for indulgent (vs non-indulgent) foods; lead to higher purchase intention for indulgent food upon a single exposure driven by enhanced perceived tastiness; and evoke satiation upon multiple exposures.

This research identifies the effect of spatial proximity of food depiction on consumer responses using different stimuli. Future work could explore the effects in alternate consummatory contexts.

The findings provide clear instructions to marketers and policymakers on how to tailor consumer responses using spatial distance in depiction of food products, depending on the food type and display format. Understanding the effect of visual food cues will help policymakers devise strategies to counter over-consumption, which increases the risk of non-communicable diseases and reduces consumer well-being (SDG 3, United Nations).

Introducing a novel pictorial cue (i.e. the spatial distance of product depiction), this paper contributes insights to the literature on implicit associations, visual information processing, satiation, over-consumption and food marketing.

Past research has demonstrated a health halo for food product labels (e.g. organic), resulting in inflated perceptions of a product’s healthfulness (e.g. low fat). While past studies have focused on labeling and related health claims, the health halo of brand names has scarcely been investigated. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the health halo of brand names featuring morality- and purity-signifiers.

The current research uses two experiments to examine the health halo of morality- and purity-signifying brand names on perceptions of nutritional and contaminant attributes. Mediation analysis is performed to investigate perceived naturalness as the mechanism for the brand name effects while moderated mediation analysis examines this mechanism across product types (healthy vs unhealthy).

The findings reveal that both the morality- and purity-signifying brand names produce a health halo on nutritional and contaminant attributes, regardless of product healthiness. Further, mediation and moderated mediation analysis provide evidence for perceived naturalness as the underlying mechanism driving these effects.

This research highlights unwarranted consumer inferences made based upon food brand names and, thus has implications for consumers, public policy and marketing managers.

While much health halo research has focused on labeling, this research examines the health halo of two brand name types which symbolically convey either morality or purity. This research provides additional contributions by investigating perceived naturalness as the underlying mechanism for the effects and is one of the few studies to investigate the health halo for both healthy and unhealthy products.

The purpose of this study is to investigate genetically modified food labeling effects on dietary restrained consumers’ perception and purchase intention based upon various labels and food type – whole versus processed.

A 2 (food type: whole vs processed) × 2 (product label: genetically modified organism [GMO] vs nongenetically modified organism [non-GMO]) research design was used in two steps. In the first step, the authors distributed 1,000 surveys, of which 858 surveys were used, and in the second step, the authors distributed 1,000 surveys and were able to use 891 surveys.

Results show that respondents with higher levels of dietary restraint have higher levels of perceived healthfulness. In addition, respondents with higher perceived healthfulness levels have a higher level of purchase intention for whole/GMO products, whole/non-GMO products, processed/GMO products and processed/non-GMO products. Moreover, the results show that individuals have higher purchase intention for whole/non-GMO than the whole/GMO products, whole/GMO than the processed/non-GMO products and processed/non-GMO than the processed/GMO products.

A future longitudinal study with assigned tracking numbers is suggested. Given that four different blocks were randomized, comparing data among individual participants would be interesting, as the ability to compare responses would be feasible among the four separate blocks.

The results of this study may assist the government in policy development, food manufacturers in labeling techniques used and consumers by increasing transparency and information availability.

The purpose of this study is to explore how consumers apply clean-eating criteria to a range of food characteristics, and the extent to which individuals are consistent in how they apply clean-eating criteria across products. Further, this study investigates how the clean-eating approach relates to underlying food choice motives.

Data were collected in a consumer survey (n = 666) in Sweden, where participants were prompted about the importance of a set of intrinsic food attributes of the “free-from” and “added” types, for three different food product types (bread, processed meat, ready meals). Data were analyzed using latent class cluster analysis, to explore segments of consumers that place similar importance to the food characteristics and hold similar food choice motives.

Clean eating can be described by two distinctly different attainment strategies: avoiding undesirable characteristics or by simultaneously approaching desirable characteristics. Notably, individuals who apply clean-eating criteria in their food choices strive for healthy, natural and environmentally friendly food, but the clean-by-approach strategy implies a stronger focus on personal health in the form of weight control.

While claims and labels on food packages concerning clean eating are implemented by food manufacturers, it remains unregulated. This study provides information for future regulations on how consumers apply clean-eating criteria, and their motives thereof. Further, the results provide insights food manufacturers regarding motives for clean eating in different consumer segments.

Food safety is an issue of key concern for Chinese consumers. This study identifies intrinsic and extrinsic cues on product labels or websites that Chinese consumers use to assess a product's perceived safety.

Five structured focus groups (total participants n = 41) were run in Suzhou China, in Chinese, to gather consumers' perceptions towards food safety cues.

A total of 18 safety cues were identified during the focus group discussions. Certifications, country of origin, production date and shelf life, ingredients and materials and nutritional information were the five safety cues consumers perceived to be the most important. The risks perceived by consumers differed based on: product category (e.g. meat, dairy, cereal); product form (e.g. fresh, chilled, frozen) and degree of processing. Interestingly, consumers used different food safety cues to assess a packaged product compared to the product shown on a website.

While providing deep qualitative insights into perceptions of food safety cues, further studies which seek to conduct quantitative work within a wider demographic context are encouraged.

This information will help to provide best practice advice for international marketers and government risk communicators on how and where to communicate the safety of food products so that they can maximise the effectiveness of their messaging within the appropriate information channels and thereby ensure that it resonates well with Chinese consumers.

This study contributes to the academic knowledge of consumer perceptions of cues related to food safety.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of food product types and affective states and on consumers’ variety seeking (VS) tendency.

Two experiments are conducted in this paper to examine the influence of different food product types and the VS-mood state relationship.

The results are consistent with the author's hypotheses and indicate that happy people incorporate more VS when healthful and unfamiliar food products are offered, while sad people incorporate more VS when hedonic and familiar food products are offered.

Marketers of leading brands selling hedonic food products could cultivate positive emotions in their target consumers in order to prevent them from switching brands. Conversely, marketers of follower brands may find it appropriate to induce negative moods in their consumers to encourage brand switching. For those marketers who sell less hedonic, healthier food products, marketing strategies should be contrary to those for hedonic food products. In addition, marketers may conduct strategies to prevent consumers from feeling sad in the case of products with a low market profile and which are unfamiliar to their consumers. They could cultivate happy moods in consumers to encourage them to make more varied food product choices.

Prior research has focussed mainly on hedonic and familiar products when explaining VS behavior, but the present research has demonstrated the need to discuss different product types, such as healthful and unfamiliar products, in order to obtain a broader understanding of affective states on VS.