Consumer perceptions and purchase behavior toward imperfect fruits and vegetables in an immersive virtual reality grocery store

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of fruits and vegetables (FaVs) abnormality on consumer perceptions and purchasing behavior. For the purposes of this study, a virtual grocery store was created with a fresh FaVs section, where 142 participants became immersed using an Oculus Rift DK2 Head-Mounted Display (HMD) software. Participants were presented either "normal", "slightly" misshapen, "moderately" misshapen or "severely" misshapen" FaVs. The study findings indicate that shoppers tend to purchase a similar number of FaVs whatever their level of deformity. However, perceptions of the appearance and quality of the FaVs depend on the degree of abnormality. "Moderately" misshapen FaVs are perceived as significantly better than those that are "heavily" misshapen but also "slightly" misshapen (except for the appearance of fruits).

Effects of physical, non-immersive virtual, and immersive virtual store environments on consumers' perceptions and purchase behavior

“…Thus, no variability in their appearance was integrated. However, recent research shows that moderately misshapen FaVs are perceived by consumers as better in terms of appearance and quality than heavily and slightly misshapen FaVs (Lombart et al, 2019). The study findings indicate that there is a minimum deformation threshold under which FaVs are not considered to be of good quality.…”

“…The virtual store (VS) can thus be a useful technology for conducting efficient and rigorous research in the field of consumer behavior (Pizzi et al, 2019;Siegrist et al, 2019), without the complexity or costs normally associated with undertaking such research in the real world (Waterlander, Jiang, Steenhuis and Mhurchu, 2015). Virtual stores can facilitate experimental research on consumers responses to manipulations of intrinsic (e.g., products shape, Lombart, Millan, Normand, Verhulst, Labbé-Pinlon and Moreau, 2019) or extrinsic food product attributes (e.g., products prices (Waterlander, Steenhuis, de Boer, Schuit and Seidell, 2013), promotions offered on these products (van Herpen, van den Broek, van Trijp and Yu, 2016), point-of-sale displays (Kim, Nonnemaker, Loomis, Shafer, Shaikh, Hill, Holloway and Farrelly, 2014), and experience (e.g., relaxing vs. neutral, Van Kerrebroeck, Brengman and Willems, 2017)). In addition, certain factors that influence consumer behavior (e.g., store layout, Krasonikolakis, Vrechopoulos, Pouloudi and Dimitriadis, 2018) can be manipulated to a greater extent and with more flexibility in a VS compared to a physical one (Bressoud, 2013).…”

“…The three groups were homogeneous with regard to sex composition (X² = 5.881; p = 0.053) and age (X² = 3.508; p = 0.173). These three groups were also homogeneous with their level of food waste consciousness, measured with six items on a six-point Likert scale (see Lombart et al, 2019): construct reliability (CR) = 0.879, average variance explained (AVE) = 0.549, X² = 0.011; p = 0.995. Since consumers tend to have a higher propensity to choose suboptimal FaVs when they are conscious about food waste (de Hooge et al, 2017), this effect was also taken into consideration for each group (M=30.29; SD=5.03).…”

Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior in Sustainable Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in Maramures County, Romania

“…Studies regarding how consumer perception (in terms of quality, taste, price, and product) shapes imperfection were conducted by Briggs [77], Lombart et al [78], and De Hooge [79]. They investigated the conditions under which consumers will buy or consume foods that deviate from ordinary products in terms of appearance standards, date labeling, or damaged packaging, without deviations from intrinsic quality or safety.…”

Visual Design Cues Impacting Food Choice: A Review and Future Research Agenda

“…It is possible that this effect would only hold for products with predictable/symmetric appearance and not for those that have a less symmetric appearance [ 186 ], for items that you peel (e.g., tangerine) and consume as is (e.g., strawberry). Lombart et al [ 198 ] already showed in a virtual store that quality perceptions decrease when misshapenness increases. Further research is necessary to investigate when and why unusual food shapes affect quality, taste, health and sustainability perceptions and how negative effects can be countered (FR 22).…”