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This paper aims to investigate consumers’ demand patterns for products with nutritional benefits and products with no nutritional benefits across processed healthy and unhealthy foods. This paper integrates price changes (i.e. increases and decreases) into a demand model and quantifies their relative impact on the quantity of food purchased. First, how demand patterns vary across processed healthy and unhealthy products is investigated; second, how demand patterns vary across nutrition-benefited (NB) products and non-nutrition-benefited (NNB) products is examined; and third, how consumers respond to price increases and decreases for NB across processed healthy and unhealthy foods is investigated.

Here, a demand model quantifying scenarios for price changes in consumer food choice behaviour is proposed, and controlled for heterogeneity at household, store and brand levels.

Consumers exhibit greater sensitivity to price decreases and less sensitivity to price increases across both processed healthy and unhealthy foods. Moreover, the research shows that consumers’ demand sensitivity is greater for NNB products than for NB products, supporting our prediction that NB products have higher brand equity than NNB products. Furthermore, the research shows that consumers are more responsive to price decreases than price increases for processed healthy NB foods, but more responsive to price increases than price decreases for unhealthy NB foods. The findings suggest that consumers exhibit a desirable demand pattern for products with nutritional benefits.

Although studies on the effects of nutritional benefits on demand have proliferated in recent years, researchers have only estimated their impact without considering the effect of price changes. This paper contributes by examining consumers’ price sensitivity for NB products across processed healthy and unhealthy foods based on consumer scanner data, considering both directionalities of price changes.

With multiple theoretical traditions, diverse topical landscape and rapid regulatory advancements galvanising the ongoing discourse, the emergent marketing scholarship on healthy and unhealthy food and beverages (F&B) has become exhaustive, fragmented and almost non-navigable. Accordingly, this study aims to synthesise and trace two decades of research focused on healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing.

This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of papers published between 2000 and 2020. The data was retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, yielding 338 papers for final analysis. Using VOSviewer software and the Biblioshiny package, the authors performed a detailed bibliometric analysis comprising performance analysis and science mapping.

The study delineated the contribution, theoretical and thematic structure of healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing scholarship. The authors also mapped the evolution trajectory of the thematic structure, which helped us contemplate the research gaps.

By delving deeper into the “who”, “where”, “how”, “what” and “when” of healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing, the study enhances the current understandings and future developments for both theorists and practitioners. However, the selection of literature is confined to peer-reviewed papers available in WoS and Scopus.

The findings delineate the existing scholarship which could guide F&B marketers and policymakers towards designing consumer-centric marketing/policy interventions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to perform a bibliometric analysis of healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing, likely to provide valuable guidelines for future scholars, policymakers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore snacking behavior and perspectives on healthy and unhealthy food choices among adolescents in Mainland China.

Four focus-group interviews were conducted. Altogether 24 participants were recruited in Changsha, a second-tier city in China, through a convenience sampling process. They were asked to report their snacking behaviors, identify whether certain snacks are healthy or unhealthy and elaborate on factors affecting food choices.

Snacking was prevalent among the participants. The most frequently consumed snacks included fruit, milk and instant noodles. Participants’ evaluations for the healthiness of foods were based on the actual nutritional values of those foods, the effects on growth and body weight and word-of-mouth. Choice of snack was driven mainly by taste, image, convenience and health consciousness.

The finding was based on a non-probability sample. The paper also did not explore the contexts where snacks were consumed.

Parents can make healthy snacks more accessible at home and at schools. Educators can teach adolescents how to read food labels. Schools can increase the availability of healthy snacks on campus. Social marketers can promote healthy snacks by associating them with fun and high taste.

This is the first paper on snacking behaviors among adolescents conducted in a second-tier city in China using focus-group methodology.

Childhood obesity is a major global health concern. Understanding children's and adolescent’s eating behaviours and promoting healthier behaviours is key for reducing the negative health outcomes associated with obesity. The current study explored the perceptions of healthy eating behaviours and the influences on eating behaviours amongst 11-to-13-year-old secondary school students.

Nine semi-structured same-sex focus group discussions were conducted in schools located in deprived areas of England, with the discussions subjected to a thematic framework analysis.

Three main constructs were identified in the analysis as follows: (1) eating patterns and lifestyle, (2) social influences and (3) environmental influences. Participants understood what healthy eating behaviours are and the benefits of eating healthy; yet, they reported irregular mealtimes and consuming unhealthy snacks. Students reported that their parents and fellow student peers were strong influences on their own eating behaviours, with girls subjected to being teased by male students for attempting to eat healthily. Finally, students perceived that unhealthy foods were cheaper, tasted better and were readily available in their social environments compared to healthier options, making healthier behaviours less likely to occur.

Findings indicate that students had a good understanding of healthy eating behaviours but did not always practise them and are seemingly influenced by their social and environmental context. The promotion of healthier eating in this age group needs to challenge the misperceptions associated with the accessibility and social acceptability of unhealthy food items.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a preliminary examination of informational and transformational advertising appeals in contemporary advertisements for healthy and unhealthy foods.

Western (European) food advertisements published in Belgian food magazines were content analyzed to identify informational and transformational advertising appeals. Belgian food advertising was selected as an adequate representation of Western (European) food advertising because marketing in Belgium is permeated by international influences (cf. Belgian Federal Government). Advertisements were sampled from three magazines over a period of five years, from January 2009 to December 2013. The sample comprised 325 unique advertisements, including 159 for healthy foods and 166 for unhealthy foods.

The results of the content analysis indicated that healthy food advertisements in Belgium are mainly informational, whereas unhealthy food advertisements are mainly transformational.

This preliminary examination of informational and transformational advertising appeals in contemporary healthy food and unhealthy food advertisements shows that healthy food advertisements in Belgium are mainly informational, whereas the segment of consumers which is precarious – people low-involved with healthy food – are mainly attracted by transformational advertising appeals. The contrasting transformational strategy of unhealthy-food advertisements can provide inspiration for healthy food advertisers to help increase healthy food consumption.

Pupils’ perspective should be better taken into account when developing nutrition education at school. The purpose of this paper is to explore Nordic children’s perspectives on the healthiness of meals in the context of school lunches.

In total, 78 focus group discussions were conducted with 10-11-year-old girls and boys (n=457) from schools in Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which were participating in the Nordic school meal project ProMeal during the school year 2013-2014. A flexible discussion guide and stimulus material in the form of 14 photographs displaying different school lunch contexts were used. The discussions were analyzed using thematic analysis.

These Nordic children seem to share the adult-set aim of healthy eating in the school context as a socio-cultural norm. Although healthy eating was constructed as a rational, normative and acceptable way to eat at school, unhealthy eating was emphasized as negotiably acceptable when eaten occasionally and under certain circumstances (e.g. at special occasions). Unhealthy eating also comprised emotionally laden descriptions such as enjoyment and disgust.

Children’s conceptualizations of healthy eating are connected to nutritional, socio-cultural, emotional and normative dimensions, which should be reflected also when developing nutrition education in school.

The need for research exploring children’s experiences of, and understandings about, school lunch motivated this unique multicenter study with a large number of participating children. In the focus groups a child-oriented, photo-elicitation method was used.

This paper aims to examine how, why and when incidental curiosity might have an influence on consumers’ unhealthy eating behaviors in a subsequent, irrelevant context.

Three experiments were conducted. Study 1 tested the basic main effect; Study 2 further tested the proposed process; Study 3 identified an important moderator and offered additional support for the mechanism.

Study 1 demonstrated the basic main effect that incidental curiosity increases consumers’ preference for unhealthy food. Study 2 replicated the effect in a simulated grocery-shopping task and further provided direct process evidence that a reward-approaching orientation underlies the effect of curiosity on unhealthy food choice. Finally, Study 3 identified information nature as an important moderator of the effect. That is, when people are curious about threatening information, they are likely to adopt an avoidance motivation, which prevents them from seeking any unhealthy food.

On the one hand, consumers could benefit from being educated that incidental exposure to curiosity cues might lead to unhealthy eating behaviors. On the other hand, public policymakers and responsible marketers should be mindful that, though widely used in marketing, the tactics that elicit consumers’ curiosity might sometimes backfire and undermine their healthy food choices.

This research contributes to the curiosity literature by demonstrating that incidental curiosity could have motivational impacts in the non-information domain, such as food choice. It also adds to the food decision literature by documenting incidental curiosity as an important situational factor of consumers’ food decisions.

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?

The aim of the research is to investigate how healthy and unhealthy foods (e.g., those of little nutritional value, but high fat and sugar content) are represented in televised advertising, analyzing the differences in persuasive strategies used to promote them.

Content analysis was performed on 62 food advertisings broadcast on the main Italian national TV channels, focusing on target, representation of food consumption, number and gender of the main characters, visual and sound effects (i.e. music jungles etc.) and references to nutritional properties.

Results showed that healthy food products are marketed almost exclusively to adults, using adult-oriented advertising techniques, whereas unhealthy food advertisings rely on communicative formats and appeals more suited for children and adolescents.

The research first investigated, with a simple descriptive approach, how television advertising of unhealthy food products relies on specifically crafted communication in order to attract young consumers' attention and, ultimately, affect their buying intentions.

This study aims to explore perceptions of healthy/unhealthy eating, and perceptions of various socializing agents encouraging healthy eating, amongst Chinese adolescents.

A survey was conducted of 152 seventh, eighth and ninth grade Hong Kong students. A structured questionnaire with closed‐ended questions was distributed in three public secondary schools.

Results showed that respondents frequently ate out with friends and frequently consumed a range of relatively unhealthy food (candies, chips, and soft drinks). They perceived that a balanced diet and eating at a regular time were the most important attributes of healthy eating. In terms of situational influences on their consumption, respondents most likely ate unhealthy food at parties, when eating out or with friends. They most likely ate healthy food at home and when they were sick. Looking at socializing agents, respondents claimed that parents and government publicity asked them to eat healthy food more often than teachers or friends. Parents were also perceived as being the most effective source in encouraging them to eat healthy food. In terms of alternative advertising appeals discouraging unhealthy eating, respondents considered news and fear appeals to be the most effective, while popularity and achievement appeals were considered to be relatively less effective.

The respondents were chosen from three secondary schools (two co‐ed schools and one school for boys). These three schools may not be representative of all schools in Hong Kong or elsewhere, thus limiting the generalizability of the findings.

The study can serve as a guideline for social services marketing professionals targeting adolescents. Looking at the findings in relation to socializing agents, social services marketers can consider influencing the adolescents' eating habits through the parents. As government publicity was perceived as a relatively weak socializing agent, there is a need to review health education materials targeting adolescents. Looking at the findings in relation to different advertising appeals discouraging unhealthy eating, news and fear appeals should be considered, as these were considered relatively more likeable and effective than other types of appeals.

The paper offers insights into designing communication strategies for adolescents. It is original in that it focuses on adolescents, and explores the perceptions of various socializing agents influencing healthy eating.