Impact of self-health awareness and perceived product benefits on purchase intentions for hedonic and utilitarian foods with nutrition claims. (March 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Loebnitz, Natascha; Grunert, Klaus G.
• Is Part Of: Food quality and preference. Volume 64(2018)
• Page Start: 221
• Page End: 231
• Publication Date: 2018-03
• Subjects: Nutrition claims -- Hedonic food -- Utilitarian food -- Purchase intentions -- Benefits sought -- Priming; Food preferences -- Periodicals; Food -- Quality -- Periodicals; Food industry and trade -- Quality control -- Periodicals; Préférences alimentaires -- Périodiques; Aliments -- Qualité -- Périodiques; Aliments -- Industrie et commerce -- Qualité -- Contrôle -- Périodiques; Food industry and trade -- Quality control; Food preferences; Food -- Quality; Periodicals; 664
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2017.09.005
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-3293

Abstract

Highlights: Adding food's perceived benefit affects purchase intention of nutrition claim. Depending on food type, nutrition claim impacts a food's perceived benefits. Self-health awareness moderates this effect. We prime a product's underlying goal and consumers' own health motivation. Priming facilitates healthier choices depending on food type and self-health awareness. Abstract: Making benefit cues explicitly available to consumers can mitigate the impacts of added product attributes, such as nutrition claims, from which consumers often infer negative meaning. Yet, food products also vary in the benefits that consumers value most; they regard taste as most important for hedonic foods, but performance as pertinent for utilitarian foods. This article presents three studies that examine how making perceived product benefits explicit affects consumers' purchase intentions toward hedonic and utilitarian food products that feature nutrition claims. Self-health awareness may moderate this effect (Study 1), which also depends on the prime, whether of the product's underlying goal (hedonic vs. utilitarian) (Study 2) or of consumers' own health motivations (Study 3). The results show that participants with high primed health motivation purchase hedonic food products with nutrition claims only if the product benefit is explicit. For utilitarian food products, the negative effect of the nutrition claim can be mitigated by making the perceived benefit explicit but only among participants with low self-health awareness. Priming thus can facilitate healthier food choices, though its outcomes depend on the type of food and self-health awareness.