The influence of consumers’ self-perceived health status and need for cognition on food-product evaluation

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying mechanisms of how consumers respond to health-claim framing via experimental design. Design/methodology/approach Across the two experiments conducted for this research, the authors examine the moderating effects of self-perceived health status and individuals’ need for cognition on health-claim framing. Findings The results indicate that personal differences moderate the effects of health-claim framing on consumers’ food-product evaluation. Consumers with poor health status evaluate food product more favorably when the reduced-disease-risk claims are offered. However, consumers with good health status evaluate food product similarly between the two health claims. Moreover, consumers with a high need for cognition evaluate food product more favorably when the reduced-disease-risk claims are used, whereas consumers with a low need for cognition evaluate food product more favorably when the enhance function claims are used. Practical implications This research provides that reduced-disease-risk claims may be the better communication message used to persuade consumers no matter they rate themselves as poor health status or good health status. Moreover, the results of the present research also indicate the importance of market segmentation. Marketers could design proper advertisements and select the appropriate media vehicles for low need for cognition readers and high need for cognition readers separately. Originality/value There has been few studies addressed consumers’ product choice with respect to different health-claim framing. Further, this research presents a new concept of the effects between individual differences and health-claim framing on consumers’ food-product evaluation.

Who really values healthy food?

“…Respondents expressed their levels of agreement on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “totally agree” to 7 = “totally disagree”. Finally, self-perceived health status was evaluated by asking participants to respond “Good” or “Poor” to the following question, “How do you rate your overall state of health?” Although five-point scales (“very good” to “very bad”) have been used in public health contexts, following the approach of Lin et al (2017) regarding marketing settings, we chose to use dichotomous scale.…”

Nutritional labelling and purchase intention interaction of interpretative food labels with consumers' beliefs and decisions

“…Thus, perceived healthiness is defined as consumers' perception of the influence that consuming a specific product has on their health (Howlett et al , 2009). Food healthiness perception is influenced by a large variety of elements (Bech-Larsen and Grunert, 2003), including certain advertising messages indicated on the food package (Lin et al , 2017; Provencher and Jacob, 2016). Consumers are receptive to those products that use healthiness as a competitive advantage (Samoggia, 2016).…”

Do consumers care about European food labels? An empirical evaluation using best-worst method

“…In the current literature, there are several studies focussed on consumers preferences towards public and private labels (Scarpa and Del Giudice, 2004; Olesen et al , 2010; Pouta et al , 2010; Andersen, 2011; Gracia et al , 2014; Aprile et al , 2012; Resano et al , 2012; Øvrum et al , 2012; Koistinen et al , 2013; Schröck, 2014; Van Loo et al , 2014; de-Magistris and Gracia, 2014; Denver and Jensen, 2014; de-Magistris and Lopez-Galán, 2016; de-Magistris and Gracia, 2016a, b; Gracia and de-Magistris, 2016; Rimpeekool et al , 2017; Kumar and Kapoor, 2017; Lin et al , 2017). In general, these studies reported that public labels are more valued than private labels.…”

“…In addition, carbon footprint and food-mile labelling are the least valued. Finally, most studies also pointed out those preferences for food-labelling schemes are heterogeneous across consumers (among others Rimpeekool et al , 2017; Kumar and Kapoor, 2017; Lin et al , 2017). For example, Platania and Privitera (2006), Vecchio and Annunziata (2015) and de-Magistris and Gracia (2016b) reported that gender was positively associated with the likelihood of using organic or typical food products.…”