“The Influence of Health Claims on Consumers’ Willingness to Buy”

“The Influence of Health Claims on Consumers’

Willingness to Buy”

1st _{Supervisor: Martine van der Heide}

2nd _{Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ir. Koert van Ittersum}

Thesis Defense Romy Peddemors

Table of Content

Introduction of the Topic

› The importance of having a healthy lifestyle has been promoted through different media channels

› Food marketers and manufacturers are focusing on the promotion of healthy food options

› Health claims are used to inform consumers

› World Health Organization states that obesity rates are still not decreasing

Literature Review

› Health Claims › Brand Trust

Conceptual Framework

Methodology

› Online experiment with four conditions

• Familiar product, with health claim

• Familiar product, without health claim

• Unfamiliar product, with health claim

• Unfamiliar product, without health claim

› Sample N = 124

• Consumers living in the Netherlands, mostly young adults (22 – 26 years)

• 96 female, 28 male respondents

› SPSS – Multiple Regression

• PROCESS by Andrew F. Hayes model 2

Conditions

Results

Hypothesis Confirmed

Hypothesis 1: Consumers’ willingness to buy healthier types of soft drinks, increases when a health claim is present.

Hypothesis 2a: Brand trust has a positive influence on consumers’ willingness to buy healthier soft drinks.

Hypothesis 2b: Health claims have a stronger positive influence on willingness to buy when consumers’ brand trust is high.

Hypothesis 3a: Product familiarity has a positive influence and increases consumers’ willingness to buy.

Results cont.

High Brand Trust Medium Brand Trust Low Brand Trust

Willingness to Buy

Brand Trust

Effect Brand Trust

No health Claim Health Claim -1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Familiar Product Unfamiliar Product

Willingness to Buy

Product Familiarity

Effect Product Familiarity

Results cont.

› Perceived healthiness positive effect on willingness to buy

• Negative interaction effect of product familiarity

• Product familiarity strengthens this negative effect

Mediation showed positive direct effect of perceived healthiness on willingness to buy

› No effect of Health claim on Perceived Healthiness (p = > .05)

• Significant negative effect of product familiarity on relation health claim – perceived

Conclusions

› Health claims do not always have a positive influence

• Health claims do not always have a positive influence on the perceived healthiness of a

product

• Health claims do not always have a positive influence on the willingness to buy

Implications

› Health claims are most effective on products that are perceived to be healthy › When familiar products are known to be “unhealthy”, implementing a health

claim does not increase willingness to buy

› Implementing health claims on products that are known and trusted to be healthy, increases perceived healthiness and willingness to buy

Thank you!