Making Sense of Information Overload: Consumer Ranking of Nutritional Claims in Cereal Based Products

Abstract

As a result of increased consumer awareness, demand for healthier food products is increasing day by day. Consumers seek healthier versions of food products which they relate to reduced presence of unhealthy components or increased presence of healthy ones. As a result, the food industry has not only increased the variety of products available but also uses nutritional claims to signal the presence of more substances. As an average consumer at the supermarket devotes just a few seconds to selecting each product, they are only able or willing to process that information that immediately attracts their attention or that is felt to be more important to them. This paper analyses how consumers rank different nutritional claims for two processed cereal products. Five claims were chosen to reflect the current market landscape of availability, and that relates to both "healthy" (i.e., fiber) and "unhealthy" (i.e., fat) substances. We use a direct ranking preference method with data from a survey conducted with consumers in a Spanish region in 2017. Results show that the ranking of claims differs between the two products (biscuits and pastries) and across consumers. However, consumers prefer those that show reduced presence of unhealthy substances above those that highlight the presence of healthy ones. Therefore, policy to maximize the impact of nutritional labelling should be product-specific.

Nutrition Claims Frequency and Compliance in a Food Sample of the Spanish Market: The BADALI Study

“…The foods examined in this study can be consulted in the BADALI webpage and the analysis of the NCs made on every food is included. As an educational tool, fresh foods that may potentially carry the same NCs are suggested as alternatives [ 47 ].…”

Personal and Psychological Traits Influencing the Willingness to Pay for Food with Nutritional Claims: A Comparison between Vice and Virtue Food Products

“…Moreover, according to previous studies, the reduced-fat nutritional claim is the most preferred [ 19 , 33 , 36 , 64 , 66 ]. However, the WTP for the low-salt content claim is 44% and 41% less than WTP for reduced-fat claims in potato chips and toasted bread, respectively.…”

“…Many models specify the utility, but the most appropriate models consider heterogeneity in consumer preferences [ 19 ]. In this regard, mixed logit models capture this heterogeneity.…”

“…compared to an unhealthy image (e.g., snack, etc.). More recently, Gracia and Barreiro-Hurlé [ 19 ] compared two types of cereal-based food products (less energy-dense biscuits and more energy-dense pastries). The authors reported that Spanish consumers ranked the importance of fibre and reduced-fat claims differently.…”

Nutrition, Choice and Health-Related Claims

“…Two lines of investigation analyzed how consumers ranked different nutritional claims. Gracia and Barreiro-Hurlé [12] reported that the ranking of claims differs between biscuits and pastries and across consumers. Moreover, the results indicated that, for the average consumer, the most important nutritional claims for the two cereal products were "reduced saturated fat" and "with no added sugar".…”