Search results

The objective of the present research is to identify the impact of food-related and packaging-related eco-labels on consumers' perceptions of food quality and safety when an ecological claim, which explains the eco-label meaning, is provided.

One survey (N = 472) plus one experimental lab study were used to test the hypotheses drawn from the elaboration likelihood model. The research employed a 2 (eco-label: MSC vs FSC) × 2 (ecological claim: present vs absent) between-subjects design plus a control condition (i.e. absence of eco-label).

When the ecological claim is absent, only food-related eco-labels were found to generate a higher food evaluation. However, when the ecological claim is present, both eco-label types (i.e. food-related and packaging-related) increased food perceptions of quality and safety because of higher feelings of pride.

From a theoretical perspective, this research identifies both food- and packaging-related eco-labels as extrinsic cues able to affect consumers' perception of food quality and safety. Moreover, the findings of this study present practical implications for package design and health policymaking.

This study aims to analyze the management and marketing literature on food buying and consumption behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic to shed light on how consumers reacted to this global crisis, to help interpret consumer reactions to possible future crises and to identify future research avenues.

This study adopts a systematic literature review as research methodology.

This study's outcomes reveal that, during the pandemic, people have deeply changed their food buying and consumption habits. The analysis identifies four main themes: food purchasing channel choice and buying behavior; food choices and consumption habits; food and “food-related” waste; and country influence on food buying and consumption.

This review uses only one database of records (Scopus). The Boolean modifiers chosen for extracting the papers may have influenced the type and number of retrieved publications. The analysis was limited to articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

While most examined investigations do not provide a comprehensive picture of consumers’ food-related responses to the pandemic and individually offer only a partial view focusing on one or just a few aspects of food consumer behavior, this study offers an overall description of consumers’ responses to the crisis and identifies important research issues to be addressed in the future.

Reducing food-related greenhouse gas emissions is one of the major tasks in the future, as food causes one-third of global emissions. Influencing customers' purchasing decisions towards low-carbon food is thus decisive. Nudging has been proven to be an adequate mechanism to influence people towards sustainable food choices. Another relatively new approach is boosting, which promotes people's education, inducing autonomous decision-making. In the context of sustainable food, research on nudging and boosting is still at the beginning. Therefore, this chapter conducts a systematic literature review to identify, classify and assess the potential of cognitively oriented nudges and boosts towards sustainable food choices. The sample consists of 217 English-speaking papers published between 2011 and 2021. After three filtering steps, 21 scientific journal publications remained in the data extraction form. All articles are field experiments, comprising descriptive labelling, evaluative labelling, and visibility enhancements. The analysis shows that menu restructurings (e.g. placing a vegetarian option on the top of the menu) in restaurants are the most effective intervention to reshape customers' demands. Evaluative labels (e.g. traffic-light labels on the menu or product packaging) are the second most effective measure. They help people understand eco-related information and thus make better decisions. The effect of descriptive labels seemed small, as they provide no meaningful frame assisting people in processing the data. In conclusion, the research recommends applying cognitively oriented nudges and boosts to promote sustainable food choices and deduces practical implications for appropriate implementation and marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential for the purchase of organic food products amongst urban Indian consumers.

The paper is based on a sample of 618 urban Indian consumers. The study questionnaire was developed to measure food-related lifestyle and attitudinal variables. The respondents were also questioned regarding their grocery purchase behaviour; awareness and purchase intentions regarding organic food. The data collected were analysed using SPSS 20.0 using factor, cluster and χ2 analysis to identify and profile the health-conscious segments and profile them based on their organic purchase intentions.

In total, 33 lifestyle variables were reduced to five food-related attitudinal factors. Based on the five factors three potential clusters were identified. The urban Indian consumer was found to be environment, health and safety conscious. Sensitized and cautious segment of young, women living in nuclear families were more open to an organic alternative. The main barriers to successful adoption were premium pricing, doubtful certification and sporadic availability of organic food.

The urban Indian is ready to shift to a healthier option. However, the awareness, availability and price need to be managed more aggressively. A larger pan-India study to identify the high-potential belts and the domestic organic distribution and certification practices need to be assessed to formulate a focused marketing strategy.

Paucity of literature exists about the potential organic consumers. Such studies are extremely meaningful for an organic marketer to design effective communication and distribution strategies in order to accelerate the adoption and preference for an organic purchase.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the relative importance of four main attributes of food products for consumer’s choice. These are price, taste, environmental friendliness and healthfulness, tested across hedonic and utilitarian food products (milk and ice-cream). The weighting of attributes involved in food choices is a complex phenomenon, as consumers must consider contradictory requirements when making their choices. Consumers’ decision-making processes might also be influenced by food category. Some food products are mostly consumed for pleasure, whereas others are consumed because of their nutritional value.

The study employs a choice-based conjoint technique, which addresses how consumers make trade-offs across a set of product attributes.

The results indicate that price and taste attributes are rated as the most important for both hedonic and utilitarian food products. However, when the authors group consumers according to their product preferences, the relative importance of product attributes changes. Specifically, the importance of environmental friendliness and healthfulness is much higher among the health-conscious and environmentally conscious segments than for other segments.

To the knowledge, this is the first study comparing the importance of this combination of product attributes (price, taste, calorie content and eco-label) across hedonic and utilitarian foods in a choice-based conjoint setting. Moreover, a new way of grouping consumers according to their ethical-value profiles enables the authors to create a psychographic description of these segments, and to relate it to their food attribute preferences.

Schwartz's portrait value questionnaire (PVQ) has extensively been used in personal values research. The present paper aims to validate the 40‐item PVQ typology, using a nationally representative sample of 997 consumers. The main objective of the survey was to investigate whether higher‐than‐average regular purchasing of quality food products (i.e. organic and PDO labelled products) coincides with stronger identification with specific PVQ values.

A questionnaire was distributed nationwide. Data were collected through personal interviews with 997 consumers. Confirmatory factor analysis and cluster analysis were the main analytical techniques used.

At the value‐based segmentation level of the analysis, identification with the PVQ value domains decreased per cluster progressively and jointly for almost all value domains, a trend that led to the identification of five distinctive national consumer segments. The trend of stronger identification with security, universalism and benevolence that appeared at the sample level re‐emerged for the “urban upper class”, the “countryside class I” and the “countryside class II”, which accounted for two‐thirds of the overall sample and were the clusters with the most dynamic quality food purchasing profile.

Despite the emergence of a clear relation between consumers' self‐transcendence and security value similarity and higher‐than‐average frequency of quality food purchasing, quality food consumers did not form a separate and clearly diversified cluster if the PVQ inventory functions as a basis for segmentation. Future models should incorporate values together with intermediate‐level constructs (e.g. beliefs and/or attitudes) when attempting to predict consumer behaviour towards quality food products.

The paper shows that while values can be used to meaningfully segment quality food consumers, there is still much to learn regarding the direct and indirect determinants of quality food purchase behaviour.

This paper aims to explore the potential of blockchain technology (BT) to support the operational excellence in perishable food supply chain (PFSC) during outbreaks, by doing use-case analysis.

A systematic literature review is performed to determine the dimensions of operational excellence in the food supply chain (FSC), then a single use-case analysis is conducted to explore the potential of blockchain in order to achieve operational excellence for PFSC during the pandemics by applying context, interventions, mechanism and outcomes (CIMO) logic.

The findings of this study reveal that blockchain capabilities such as immutability and transparency, visibility, traceability, integration and interoperability, disintermediation and decentralisation, smart contracts and consensus mechanism provide better sustainable operational excellence outcomes for PFSCs to be more responsive, flexible, efficient and collaborative to cope with the impacts of COVID-19.

This research employs only one real case with multiple PFSC participants. Statistical generalisation is not possible at this stage of the research. However, the findings are not restricted to this single use-case.

This study provides a research direction to explore the potential of BT to achieve operational excellence in the PFSC during outbreaks and generates prescriptive knowledge for better managerial decision-making across the PFSC during outbreaks.

This research conducts semi-structured interviews with different participants in one blockchain ecosystem to understand multiple participants' perspectives of operational excellence within PFSC.

This study aims to reveal the implications that trust, as a key driver of consumer behaviour, might have on consumer acceptance of front-of-pack labels (FOPLs) and policy effectiveness. By conducting three studies on 1956 European consumers with different levels of exposure to FOPLs, this study offers additional theoretical and experimental support through a deep investigation of the central role of trust in consumers’ decision-making towards healthier and more informed food choices.

Study 1 used structural equation modelling to assess whether trust is a relevant mediator of the relationship between attitude and behavioural intention (BI), thus upgrading the front-of-pack acceptance model (FOPAM); Study 2 tested the model by comparing two labels at the extremes of the current European scheme (NutrInform Battery [NiB], Nutri-Score [NS]); Study 3 assessed the effect in cases where the connection between trust and algorithms is made transparent and evaluated trust dimensions, focusing on the perception of an algorithm presence behind FOPLs information.

Study 1 strengthens the FOPAM model with the mediating role of trust in FOPLs, demonstrating a positive effect of attitude on trust and, in turn, on BI, and resulting in a higher model fit with all the significant relationships; Study 2 revealed that the relative performance of the different labels on the FOPAM can be explained by the trust dimension; Study 3, investigating the dynamics of trust in the FOPAM, revealed that the NS is less effective than the NiB on attitude, BI and trust.

The sample was limited to Italian, French and English respondents, and two labels at the extreme of the spectrum were examined. Furthermore, the research has relevance to the issue of trust. Other moderators used in previous studies on technology acceptance model, such as actual use versus perceptual use, user experience level or type of users and type of use might be investigated.

The investigation of trust, with the upgrade of FOPAM, enhances understanding of consumers’ decision-making processes when aided by food labels and makes a new contribution to the European Union “Inception Impact Assessment” in preparation for the finalization of the “From-Farm-to-Fork Strategy”, providing new insights into the role of trust by assessing the relative performance of FOPLs in consumers’ acceptance of food-related information. Furthermore, this study revealed that consumers’ perception of FOPLs worsens when they realize that they are the result of an algorithmic calculation. Finally, the new FOPAM represents a reliable theoretical model for future research on FOPL.

This study increases the knowledge about the performance of different FOPLs on several dimensions of food decision-making, positions the upgraded FOPAM as a valid alternative to existing theoretical models to assess the relative performance of labels, also extending the literature in the context of algorithm-based FOPL, and could be used as a valid support to policymakers and industry experts in their decision towards a unified label at European level.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a model and note the ranking of the trust factors of messages about organic food in social networks.

The research was divided into four phases. The first employed the literature review about Trust, Trust of products, Trust of organic foods and Trust in the social networks. This review was prepared as some hypothesis about the trust of messages about organic food in the social network. The second employed a focused interview to supplement the mentioned hypothesis to 31 factors that affect the trust of messages about organic food in social networks. In the third phase, 300 forms were used to collect information from Iranian consumers for exploratory factor analysis. Finally, neural networks were used to determine the ranking of the mentioned factors.

The results show 31 factors that affect the trust of messages about organic food in social networks. The results of this study showed that Iranian and international organic foods producers may be able to spread messages of trust about their products in social networks by attending to these 31 factors. This study also explored a model constructed using EFA that showed that six factors have a positive effect on the level of trust of messages about organic food in social networks.

This research effectively helps organic food producers to better understand the trust factors and ways to improve that trust in cyberspace marketing plans and to increase their sales.

For the first time, this research seeks a model for the factors affecting consumer trust in organic foods in social networks, and in the next step, it ranks these factors with artificial neural networks.

The present study attempts to offer more insights into the Greek organic market. It examines the organic products as “eco‐products”, suitable for “green” consumers, who are ecologically/environmentally ecology‐aware and who are concerned with health and quality‐of‐life issues. Analysing a countrywide sample, the survey concludes that three consumer types exist in terms of attitude towards, purchase intention and awareness of organic products: the “unaware”, the “aware non‐buyers”, and the “(aware) buyers” (or simply buyers) of organic food products. After developing a detailed profile of the first two, the “aware buyers” type is segmented in terms of five groups of personality and behavioural factors, defined in the international literature as the driving forces of organic purchasing.