The Impact of Nutrition Claims on Purchase Behavior for Food Products

Faced by increasing emphasis on healthy lifestyles in the marketplace, manufacturers try to persuade consumers by using nutrition claims on their packaging. While experimental research suggests that such claims influence consumer behavior in a variety of ways, it remains unknown whether and to what extent they have an effect in actual grocery situations with a large variety of SKUs and large amounts of information to process. In this study, the authors investigate the effect of presence (stressing the presence of a healthy ingredient) and absence nutrition claims (stressing the absence of an unhealthy ingredient) on consumers´ purchase behavior using UK household scanner purchase data from 17 product categories. The authors find that presence claims increase consumer choice but not the quantity purchased, while absence claims decrease both choice likelihood and quantity. Importantly, nutrition claim’s effectiveness depends on its credibility and its weight in the purchase decision. Credible carriers (i.e., higher priced and national brand SKUs) increase choice probabilities for all claims, and presence (absence) claims are more effective in healthy (unhealthy) categories. Claims receive more weight in the choice decision when nutrition claims are more distinctive in a category, and less weight when marketing intensity is high (for presence claims)