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The purpose of this study is to examine how consumers perceive nutrition labeling on wine and how this information impacts healthiness perceptions of wine.

A series of four experiments focused on healthiness perceptions and purchase likelihood.

Consumers who read wine labels rate wine as significantly less healthy. Sugar content affects healthiness perceptions of wine more than calories. Changing the serving size on the label moderates these effects. Consumers high in dietary restraint process this nutrition information differently.

Future research could examine actual purchase behavior using retail data.

This study has implications for consumers, manufacturers and public policy. While currently most consumers are not motivated to read a nutrition label on wine, specific nutrition information can impact consumer perceptions of wine. Consumer education is recommended.

Research on nutrition labeling of alcohol specifically has been very limited.

The purpose of this study is to provide a nuanced understanding of the marketing placebo effect (MPE) of products with reduced sugar labeling and how it forms certain perceptual underpins (perceived healthiness (PH) and perceived tastiness (PT)), with the potential effect of product category and social class in consideration.

The proposed model is tested using a sample of 822 participants by employing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Hypothetical relationships among MPE, PH, PT, purchase intention (PI) and social class are examined for both hedonic and utilitarian products.

The results highlight the positive role of MPE in leveraging consumer PI through the parallel mediation of PH and PT. The positive effect of MPE on PH and PT was more pronounced for the utilitarian product. In addition, social class negatively moderated the relationship between PH and PI only in the case of the utilitarian product.

This paper contributed to the MPE literature in the food industry by challenging the conventional intuition of “Unhealthy = Tasty” and highlighting the potential of perceived food healthiness to positively influence perceived food tastiness under the effect of MPE. An upper social class would attenuate the positive effect of perceived food healthiness on PI.

Consumer food behavior has received considerable attention from marketers, researchers and regulators. With the rising obesity epidemic worldwide, the existing literature and previous reviews provide a limited understanding of consumers’ unhealthy food choices. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate consumer psychology for food choices in terms of mental processes and behavior.

This systematic literature review analyzed 84 research papers accessed from the Web of Science database and selected high-quality marketing journals. A detailed analysis identified themes arranged in an organizing framework. Gaps, limitations, convergence and ambivalent findings were noted to derive future research directions.

Major themes in the literature include food marketers’ actions (food stimuli and context), environmental influence (micro and macro) and consumer psychology and personal factors, leading to food choice related decisions. The antecedents and consequences of food choice healthiness are summarized. Several studies converged on the benefits of health motivations and goals, food literacy and customizing meals bottom-up on food choice healthiness.

This review helps researchers gain state-of-the-art understanding on consumer psychology for food choices. It presents ambivalent and converging findings, gaps and limitations of extant research to inform researchers about issues that need to be addressed in the literature. This review presents future research questions to guide research on critical issues. This literature review contributes to marketing domain literature on consumer’s food well-being and overall well-being.

This review offers actionable insights for food marketers, policymakers and nongovernmental organizations to drive consumer demand for healthier foods, focusing on food labeling, food environment, message framing and raising consumer awareness.

This review offers current understanding of consumer psychology for food choices focusing on healthiness, an aspect lacking in previous literature reviews.

Nutrition labels provide a cost-effective method of conveying nutrition information to consumers. This study aimed to assess the use of nutrition facts panels, knowledge of traffic light labelling (TLL) and perceived healthiness of food items using TLL among consumers.

A web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among adults in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (n = 1,322). TLL knowledge score was derived for each participant. Conjoint analysis was used to calculate the utilities and relative importance of the perceived healthiness scores for four attributes (fat, saturated fat, total sugar, salt) at the aggregate level.

Participants had a positive attitude towards TLL but were less familiar with TLL than the nutrition facts panel (47.4 vs 85.8%). The mean TLL knowledge score was 3.6 out of 7 (51.6%). Younger age, higher education, higher income, and health-related qualifications were associated with higher scores. Conjoint analysis showed that participants tend to choose products with greener labels, especially for sugars (80.1%) and avoid red labels for fats. Sugars had the highest percentage value of relative importance compared to the other attributes (27.1%).

The study outcomes offer valuable insights into the extent of consumer awareness, comprehension and utilization of nutrition facts panels in the UAE. These findings contribute essential knowledge for a deeper understanding of the impact of nutrition labels on consumer behaviour and decision-making in the region.

This study explores consumers' perceptions of purchasing fast food items through online platforms. The central idea of this research is to practically assess the various elements impacting the consumers’ perceptions of online purchasing of fast food items and find out the factors with high importance and performance value.

A quantitative research approach was used to collect data from 402 participants in the form of a pen-and-paper-based method using a 5-point Likert scale. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and importance-performance analysis. Theory of planned behavior and technology acceptance model form the basis for this research.

The findings indicate that constructs such as convenience, perceived quality and perceived healthiness positively influence consumers' perceptions of online purchasing of fast food items. On the other hand, competitive prices, discounts and promotions (CPDP) and online shopping experience have no significant impact on perceived value for money.

A constraint of this study is that it was done in a particular geographical location, which restricts the generalizations of the findings. The study only examined consumers' perceptions of online fast food purchasing, and future research could explore consumers' actual behaviors toward personalized fast food recommendations by online sellers.

The research supports and extends the existing literature by comprehensively understanding consumers' perceptions of purchasing fast food online. These findings can help online fast food sellers improve their services and develop targeted marketing strategies.

Individuals, organizations, firms, and governments have been making strenuous effort to promote sustainable and green consumption. However, it is noticeable that a large amount of unattractive produce is ruthlessly discarded and wasted around the globe, resulting in unsustainable consumption behavior, harming long-term business development, and breaking the harmonious relationship between humans and nature. Therefore, to increase consumer literacy toward unaesthetic produce, this research investigates the pivotal role of “natural” labeling in increasing purchase intention toward visually unattractive fruits and vegetables.

By recruiting participants from one of the largest online crowdsourcing platforms (the Credamo), this research conducts three online experimental studies (with two pilot studies) to test three hypotheses based on the cue utilization theory and the lay belief theory.

The results show that unattractive produce with the “natural” label could significantly increase consumers' purchase intention compared with those without specific labels. The results also reveal that consumers' lay beliefs that natural foods are perceived to be tastier and healthier mediate the positive effects of “natural” labeling (vs no specific labeling) on willingness to purchase.

This research explores competing lay beliefs about unattractive produce. It identifies the positive effects of lay beliefs “natural = tasty and healthy” through “natural” labeling appeal, thus attenuating the misapplication of lay beliefs “unattractive = tasteless and unhealthy” and broadening the application scope of consumer lay belief theory. The findings also contribute to the cue literature by manifesting the positive consequences of the “natural” label playing as a cognitive cue in priming lay beliefs about naturalness. In addition, it also paves a positive way for business practitioners and marketers to develop the produce industry sustainably.

This research aims to elucidate why consumers decide to eat meals that seem to be higher in calories and salt, despite their goal being to consume fewer calories and sodium. Korean participants are to be used for this study. The present research further investigated the impacts of categorization and averaging bias in relation to the health halo phenomenon, specifically focusing on traditional food and textured vegetable protein (soy meat) burgers. Thus, the present research investigated how consumers' intentions contrasted with their consumption goals in food choice circumstances.

We partitioned the survey due to the COVID-19 epidemic. A single, well trained surveyor first surveyed customers at cafés in Seoul and six other Korean cities. We received 102 in-person survey replies. A total of 254 advanced degree or undergraduate students from two universities completed an online questionnaire. There are 356 responses. Two studies were conducted where participants were instructed to evaluate the perceived healthiness, calorie content, and sodium level of different food items. The specifics of each study are elucidated in the main body of the paper.

This study shows that Koreans categorize meals as virtue or vice depending on their perceived healthiness, validating the categorization effect. Furthermore, this research demonstrated that consumers' perceptions of the health benefits of traditional meals and soy meat burgers impact their categorization. Koreans also assessed the average of the vice and virtue and found vice-virtue combination meals healthier than the vice alone. This affects how calories and sodium are perceived. This study also shown that high virtue affects averaging bias more than weak virtue in meals with vice and virtue combo.

This study extended food categorization and averaging bias to non-US consumers and confirmed this contradictory meal choice is universal. Health halo also affects food health perception. The results of this study revealed that Koreans consider traditional food healthier than western junk food. Korean customers incorrectly assume soy meat burgers have fewer calories and sodium than regular burgers. Thus, this study explains Korean consumers' food health misconceptions related to paradoxical consumption.

Consumers consider retailers' standard private labels (PLs) as relevant choices, compared to national brands (NBs), and their demand for private label products has increased significantly over the past decade. At the same time, PLs have undergone a profound transformation as retailers have enhanced their quality. The goal of this research is to investigate the impact of claims used to highlight the enhanced quality of standard PL products on consumers' perceptions and behaviours.

A between-subjects experiment, set in a store laboratory, was used to study consumers' perceptions and behaviours. The impact of six non-nutrition claims – linked, according to the self-other trade-off, either to concern for consumers' health (internal to the self) or for the environment (external to the self) – on consumers' reactions has been studied. Then, the data collected were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

This research indicates that health claims retailers make to echo consumers' own concerns have positive impacts at three basic levels: the brand, the retail chain and the store. It also highlights the central role of trust in standard PLs, which, once activated by the non-nutrition claims made by retailers and the increase in the quality of standard PLs thus inferred by consumers, can improve consumers' attitude toward the food retailers' stores and reinforce their intentions to visit again and recommend them.

From a theoretical perspective, this research supplements cue utilisation theory as it applies this framework to standard PLs and establishes that consumers use extrinsic cues (i.e. communications on non-nutrition claims) to infer the quality of standard PL brand products. It also complements scant studies on retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR) with quality aspects of their own labels as it specifies the levers (i.e. the claims) to use to improve retailers' CSR image and consumers' behaviours.

From a managerial perspective, this research highlights the superiority of retailers' claims related to consumer health and, more specifically, of claims highlighting the natural origin of ingredients. For this specific assertion, trust in the standard PL and the CSR image of the brand have direct and indirect impacts, via attitude toward the stores, on consumers' intentions to return to and to recommend these stores.

Despite the increasing importance of products as effective tools for communicating companies' CSR policies, scant research has been conducted on consumers' reactions to non-nutrition claims, which are increasingly prominent in the marketplace.

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.

This study investigates factors motivating upcycled food choices and assesses the association between these factors and hesitancy towards upcycled food consumption in a Swedish population.

An online food choice questionnaire was used. Participants (n = 682) were categorised into Inclined and Hesitant groups based on their intention to consume upcycled foods. The factors motivating upcycled food choices were identified using explanatory factor analyses. Independent t-tests assessed the differences in the mean importance score of factors between the two groups. The association between upcycled food choice factors and hesitancy towards consumption was evaluated by logistic regressions (adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics).

The most important upcycled food choice factor in both groups was ethical concerns, followed by natural content, sensory appeal, price, healthiness, familiarity and impression. The Inclined group’s mean importance score for ethical concern was higher than the Hesitant group (p_value<0.001) and, except for natural content, the mean importance scores for the other factors were higher in the Hesitant group compared to the Inclined group (p_value<0.05). Participants who perceived ethical concern as an important factor had lower odds of hesitancy (Odds ratio = 0.39; 95%CI:0.26,0.59; p_value<0.001), and those who considered sensory appeal an important factor had higher odds of hesitancy (Odds ratio = 2.42; 95%CI:1.62,3.63; p_value<0.001) towards upcycled food consumption compared to participants who did not consider these as important factors.

This is the first study investigating health and non-health-related upcycled food choice motives using a food choice questionnaire. Identifying these motives helps food developers and researchers determine factors influencing upcycled food consumption.