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This paper aims to offer social marketers an innovative method to promote healthy foods. This method demonstrates the effectiveness of indirect communication in attracting consumers to healthy foods. Further, it aims to offer a way to promote food as healthier with no detrimental effects on its perceived appeal, which are a likely side effect of advertising food as healthy.

Four between-participant lab studies (N = 50, 80, 80, 102) included manipulations of food motion vs stillness and then compared ratings of food freshness, healthiness and appeal using self-report measures.

Motion increases healthiness evaluation. This increase in healthiness evaluation occurs without reductions in food appeal. These effects are mediated by evaluations of freshness. This occurred across three different food types and two mediums (still images and digital videos).

The paper provides an effective tool for social marketers wishing to encourage healthier eating. Specifically, it helps address two problems: low effectiveness of prevalent, information-based appeals to encourage healthy eating; and reduced evaluations of tastiness that normally occur when consumers are convinced food is healthy.

Social marketers can use motion as an effective tool to promote food as healthy. Importantly, this indirect communication avoids the potential pitfall of reduced food appeal. This should help encourage healthier eating. The findings also supports the use of indirect cues as an effective approach to promoting social ends.

Offering a novel, indirect method of enhancing judgments of food healthiness via a simple visual cue. Demonstrating the effect and its underlying mechanism. Providing a way to counter the prevalent “unhealthy = tasty” intuition, a major obstacle to promoting healthy eating. Supporting social marketers’ use of indirect communication to increase the appeal of desirable societal goals. Finally, showing that sensory visual cues can serve as a source of heuristic thinking.

The COVID-19 has brought with it valuable opportunities for the retail sector. Notably, online channels have assumed a key role for businesses that can rely less on physical channels due to the pandemic's restrictions. Within this context, the study aims to identify the main antecedents leading to the formation of the male and female customers' continuance intention of using online food delivery services (OFDS) in the restaurant industry.

A web-based self-completion survey and a subsequent structural equation modelling have been employed on a sample of 360 participants.

Findings reveal that perceived healthiness, quarantine procedures, perceived hygiene, perceived ease of app use and attitude significantly influence continuance intention. Moreover, the moderator analysis corroborates that male consumers' continuance intention is mainly influenced by perceived healthiness, quarantine procedures and perceived hygiene. Conversely, female customers' continuance intention is predicated on perceived healthiness and attitude.

Although the adoption of a sample of young customers (18–29 years) guarantees good research internal validity, findings are not generalizable.

The study provides valuable contributions for restaurants related to the (1) creation/management of their own OFDS platforms; (2) selection of the right third-party platforms.

The paper is one of the first studies examining the predictors impacting on customers' OFDS continuance intention in the COVID-19 context by also focusing on gender differences.

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.

This study aims to investigate how restaurant customers’ heuristic judgment, originating from their perceived level of congruity between restaurant brand image regarding healthfulness and healthy menu products, can affect their information processing in terms of their perceived nutritional information credibility and, furthermore, how these effects influence customers’ attitude toward the menu in terms of healthiness.

A Web-based survey was developed and distributed to randomly selected respondents in the USA, and in total, 320 responses were used for the data analyses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the relationship among three constructs: perceived brand–product congruity, perceived nutritional information credibility and nutrition attitude toward the healthy menu item being promoted. To assess the mediating role of perceived information credibility, an analytical procedure proposed by (Baron and Kenny 1986) was used. Finally, to investigate the moderating effect of the health involvement, multiple group analyses were executed.

The study results suggested that the synchronization between healthful brand image of the restaurant and the promoted menu item is important for ensuring customers’ perceptions of information credibility regarding the menu item healthiness and for eliciting customers’ positive nutrition attitudes toward the menu item. Also, positive nutrition attitudes toward a menu item can be increased by improving perceived information credibility. Depending on an individual’s level of health involvement, the relationships between the three proposed constructs vary.

This paper includes a theoretical model that explains customers’ heuristic evaluation of a healthy menu product by assessing the influence of brand image congruity in terms of healthy menu promotion.

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.

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 paper is to explore how health consciousness and skepticism toward health claims are related to perceived healthiness and willingness to buy functional food (i.e. functional yogurt) compared to conventional and organic (bio) food.

A survey of 295 consumers was conducted in Lithuania. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Research findings indicate that health conscious consumers tend to discount messages about the health value of functional food and show preferences for organic food. In contrast, skepticism toward health claims has a higher negative homogenous impact on the perceived healthiness of functional, organic and conventional products compared to health consciousness. On the other hand, skepticism toward health claims does not directly reduce consumers’ willingness to buy functional, organic and conventional products.

Testing other settings, product categories, additional constructs and understanding underlying processes using an experimental design may help to gain more insights into how health conscious and skeptical consumers make food choices.

An examination of health consciousness and skepticism toward health claims can provide at least a partial explanation as to why many functional food products fail to gain consumer confidence.

Based on the reactance theory, the study sheds some light on the understanding of how different psychosocial factors are related to consumer attitudes toward functional, organic and conventional food.

Building upon humans’ trichromatic vision systems, dual-process theory and halo effects, this paper aims to examine the effects of red and green color brightness of food pictures on customers’ evaluations and purchase intention of restaurant food.

The proposed hypotheses were tested across three experimental designed studies on a total of 575 participants. Multilevel analysis, analysis of variance and multivariate analysis of variance were applied for data analysis.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the effects of red brightness and green brightness on customers’ affective and cognitive evaluation of food and purchase intention in Study 1. Study 2 validates the effects of red and green brightness on food evaluation with the presence of nutrition information. Study 3 further elaborates on the halo effects of color brightness on customers’ favorable intentions to patronize a restaurant and willingness to pay for a meal in a controlled lab experiment.

One main limitation is that this paper focuses on unveiling the role of color brightness and does not consider other picture properties, which opens an avenue for future research.

This paper includes implications for food promotion and management of customers’ experience via food pictures.

This paper is one of the first attempts to reveal the effects of red and green brightness of food pictures on customers’ food evaluation and food consumption behavioral intentions.

This research investigates the influence of package sustainability on food satiation perception.

Research hypotheses were tested through three experimental studies.

Three experimental studies show that food quality is associated to higher perceived food satiation (preliminary study); that a food packaged in a sustainable package is perceived as more satiating than the same food packaged in a non-sustainable package and that this effect is explained by the higher perceived quality triggered by the presence of a sustainable package (Study 1); and that the positive relationship between higher perceived quality and perceived satiation is verified only for healthy but not for unhealthy foods (Study 2).

The present research advances knowledge on the highly debated issue of sustainable food packages. By proposing that consumers might perceive a healthy food presented in a sustainable package as more satiating, the authors show another extrinsic packaging cue modifying consumers' perception, namely package sustainability.

The number of researches that evaluate how behavioural and personality issues affect consumers’ acceptance and perception of food is increasing. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of nutritional information and health claims related to soya and cashew nut beverages over consumers’ acceptance and perception regarding nutritional value and healthiness and to verify whether behavioural and personality issues affect such evaluation.

The samples were evaluated in two phases, with (blind phase) and without information (informed phase) about their composition, nutritional characteristics and functional claims related to some of their ingredients. The sensory evaluation data were analysed by means of the analysis of variance for repeated measures, applying 2 (information) × 2 (beverage) and generalised linear model to evaluate the effect of information over the acceptance averages, as well as over the perception of healthy food and nutritional value.

Information on composition, nutritional characteristics and functional claims related to the cashew nut and soya beverages did not influence flavour acceptance (p-value = 0.250) and overall impression (p-value = 0.316), but had a positive impact on consumers’ perception regarding healthiness (p-value < 0.001) and nutritious value (p-value < 0.001) of both beverages, the cashew nut beverage being perceived as more nutritious and healthier than the soya beverage. Consumers’ different characteristics with respect to their interest in healthy eating (high and low) and food neophobia (neophiliacs and neophobics) did not have any influence on the beverages’ acceptance, as well as on the perception of healthy food and nutritious value.

This work compares consumers’ acceptance and perception regarding nutritional value and healthiness with relation a totally unique product in the Brazilian market, and in the world, a new functional beverage made from cashew nuts, with a soya-milk beverage. Until this moment, there are no studies comparing consumer acceptance and perception of products based on hydrosoluble extract-base added with fruit juice which evaluate the influence of behavioural and personality characteristics of consumers in their perception and acceptance towards these products.