Search results

The globally recognised link between diet and health needs to be communicated to consumers to facilitate healthy food choices. Thus, this paper aims to determine South African (SA) metropolitan consumers' opinions and beliefs about the food-health link, as well as their opinions and use of health information on food labels.

A cross-sectional study using fieldworker-administered questionnaires was conducted. Using stratified randomised sampling, 1,997 respondents were recruited. The data were weighted to represent the metropolitan SA adult population (n=10,695,000).

Practically significantly more respondents agreed than disagreed there is a food-health link and that health messages on food labels are supported by scientific research. Respondents' opinions on health information on food labels were mostly positive, as confirmed by the average opinions for the different ethnic groups. The results identified a lack of interest, time and price concerns, and habitual purchasing as reasons for not reading food labels. Health-concerned respondents also considered labels as important health information sources.

Consumer education on the food-health link and the use of health information on food labels should address the deficiencies identified through the opinions and use of food labels by these respondents.

Representative results of SA metropolitan consumers in this study are significant since third world countries are burdened by various diseases and former studies only used limited-sized non-probability samples which could not be generalised.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how health consciousness and nutrition self-efficacy influence attitudes towards and use of nutrition labels, the moderating effect of nutrition knowledge between health consciousness and nutrition label attitude, and the impact of the consumer’s ethical evaluation of a business on nutrition label use.

This study proposes an integrative model that includes health consciousness, nutrition self-efficacy, nutrition knowledge, nutrition label attitude, ethical evaluation, and nutrition label use. Empirical data were collected from a famous website in Taiwan by a non-ordered questionnaire to decrease the priming effect, and 306 valid questionnaires were collected. The collected data were analysed using SPSS and AMOS software.

The results show that both health consciousness and nutrition self-efficacy have direct effects on nutrition label attitude, and this attitude will influence label use. There is a moderating effect of nutrition knowledge, in terms of both subjective and objective nutrition label knowledge, between health consciousness and nutrition label attitude. However, the moderating effect in the low nutrition label knowledge group is slightly greater than in the high nutrition label knowledge group. The consumer’s ethical evaluation of businesses affects nutrition label use.

This study is the first to indicate that nutrition label knowledge, both subjective and objective, will moderate the relationship between consumers’ health consciousness and their attitude towards nutrition labels. Furthermore, this study affirms the relationship between the consumer’s ethical evaluation of a firm and nutrition label use.

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.

This study aims at verifying the impact of literacy on over-the-counter (OTC) drug consumer vulnerability as evaluated by health literacy and label comprehension.

The item response theory (IRT) was used to estimate the health literacy of two groups and the two-way analysis of variance tests was used to test the hypotheses for the existence of mean differences between the two populations. The convenience sample involved 188 OTC consumers: 94 (50%) poorly literate and 94 (50%) university students/graduates.

University consumers/graduates have a level of health literacy and label comprehension that is superior to those presented by poor literate consumers. Also, age does not influence the level of health literacy by OTC drug users but has a significant impact on the understanding of OTC drug labels. Finally, the level of schooling and the “age group,” simultaneously, does not impact the understanding of OTC drug labels or health literacy.

This study has added in the field of knowledge by investigating the behavior of poor literate consumers in Brazil, a developing country. The results may be relevant to Marketing professionals, especially those in the pharmaceutical industry, and to police makers, as they help identify the main problems faced by poorly literate consumers.

It is necessary to raise awareness of the dangers of self-medication and wrong use of medications, mainly focused on people with low literacy. As a suggestion, a simple glossary presented along with the label could provide explanations of scientific terms, thus increasing health literacy and reducing the vulnerability of the consumers.

This study showed that when using common words such as gastritis to define a health problem, there is a higher degree of correctness. These results suggest the adoption of a more straightforward language and more precise explanations. By doing that, the pharmaceutical industry and policymakers will improve their social impact by increasing consumer power and taking care of the health of the most vulnerable population: the illiterate people.

This study contributes to the international literature, as it enhances and clarifies the knowledge about the customers’ power and vulnerability in developing countries. It fills a gap by evaluating label comprehension and heath literacy at the same time, giving an academic contribution for pharmaceutical consumers’ studies.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the preference of health-warning message labeling in an eating-away-from-home context. The authors assessed individuals’ preference valuation of such messaging from a dual – consumer and citizen – perspective and with associated expected risk reduction (RR) level.

In an online stated choice experiment on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 658), participants were asked to provide willingness to pay (WTP) preferences for health-warning messages and based on the expected RR from health-warning messages. Two types of multiple price list questions were used for consumer and citizen contexts. Interval regression and descriptive analysis methods were applied to analyze the data.

The study found that individuals placed a higher value (higher WTP) on health-warning message labeling when acting as citizens rather than as consumers. An RR expectation of 50 per cent was most effective in increasing participants’ WTP. Individuals who ate out frequently were more concerned about healthier food messages, and the influence of gender and age on WTP was conditional on individuals’ roles as consumers versus citizens.

This study extends the theory of consumer-citizen duality to the context of health-related information labeling, thus opening the discussion to extending such labeling from traditionally risky behavior such as alcohol and tobacco to also including food choice behavior. The authors also highlight implications on policy and industry practices to promote healthy food choices through such messages.

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.

This paper aims to investigate inferences consumers make about organic and all-natural labeled products in both food and non-food contexts using the health halo effect as a theoretical foundation.

This paper uses three experiments to test the effects of organic and all-natural labeling across three product types, food, personal hygiene and household cleaning, while controlling for environmental attitudes.

The results of the experiments in the context of food, personal hygiene and household cleaning products suggest that both organic and all-natural labeling produce halo effects. Distinct findings are presented across the three product types.

Findings indicate that consumers may make unwarranted inferences about both organic and all-natural labeled products and demonstrates that the health halo effect is a potentially robust phenomenon, pervasive across a diverse array of products. This research used a crowdsourcing platform for sample recruitment. Future research should validate the results of these experiments with other sample types.

This research suggests that consumers may make similar unwarranted inferences for diverse products bearing organic and all-natural labels. These inferences are particularly intriguing given the differing regulatory requirements for the labels

Organic and all-natural labels are ubiquitous in both food and non-food products. However, research on either label primarily exists in a food context and has not directly compared the labels. Understanding the inferences consumers make based on the labels across product types is imperative for both marketing and public policy.

Purpose – To assess labeling and social control of clients in contemporary mental health care organizations.

Methodology/approach – Fifteen months of observation in two multiservice mental health care organizations, interviews with workers and clients, and analysis of organizational documents.

Findings – The organizations used a variety of organizational labels, both official and informal, which served distinct purposes in organizational life and which did not always agree in their construction of the client. Official mental illness diagnosis was a bureaucratic label, while informal labels determined the types of social control to which clients were subjected. Clients who were informally labeled severely mentally ill were subject to integrative social control, while exclusionary social control was applied to those informally seen as not being severely mentally ill. Unlike in classic studies of mental health care, looping processes, in which client behaviors are viewed as symptoms, do not reliably predict the types of labels or social control applied to clients.

Implications – It is important for a sociology of diagnosis to contextualize official diagnosis in the repertoire of organizational labels applied to clients in mental health care, recognizing that it plays a limited but important role in organizational life. Informal labels, which at time conflict with official diagnosis, play a more prominent role in the management of everyday organizational life.

The primary purpose is to examine the factors that affect the use of nutritional facts, nutrient content claims and health claims on food label use in the United Kingdom.

The paper reports the results of a survey of over 300 face‐to‐face interviews with shoppers of Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury – three of the major supermarkets in the UK.

Product class involvement factors, individual characteristics, health‐related factors (nutritional knowledge, health locus of control, perceived need of dietary change), situational, attitudinal and behavioral factors were found to be significant factors affecting the use of nutritional information and nutritional and health claims on food labeling. While the use of nutritional information and health claims increases with the stated importance of “nutrition” and “family preferences”, it is less likely among shoppers for whom “taste” is an important driver of food purchasing behaviour. There is also evidence of mistrust in health claims, as indicated by the negative relationship between the consideration of such claims and the stated importance of “quality” and perceived need to “change dietary quality” – the more discerning shoppers are the least likely to consider health claims.

The study provides evidence that a wider range of product class involvement factors is necessary to predict the use of nutritional information and nutritional and health claims on food labeling. It also offers a conceptualization of health‐related factors to include health locus of control as a predictor of the acquisition of nutrition and health information.

This study aims to determine the effect of health knowledge on nutrition-label use and attitude, and consequently on healthy food choice among Malaysian Muslim consumers.

This study adopts the positivist, deductive and quantitative approach. A sample consisting of 257 Muslim consumers, at least 15 years old, were selected using systematic street-intercept sampling method. Data collected using a self-administered questionnaire were analysed using descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings reveal the significant positive effect of health knowledge on nutrition-label use and attitude towards nutrition label, but only attitude towards nutrition label significantly predicts healthy food choice.

Though the findings add to the existing literature, provide useful information on how nutrition label could guide the consumer to make healthier food choices and serve as a reference point that could stimulate and guide future researchers and other relevant parties, this study is limited by several factors that require replication in future research.

This research is perhaps one of the first attempts to consider the role of nutrition label as one of the ways to comply with the Tayyib principle.