Brands, colours, images and the "bio"-sign. Influences of food label's context factors upon consumers' understanding of health claims and their attitudes towards them

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: DE: 1; DK: 12, Aarhus School of Business, language: English, abstract: OBJECTIVE: In times when consumers' health and healthy eating has become a central priority in the European Commissions' mission to protect the interests of consumers the European legislation has put a big emphasis on the regulations concerning functional foods in the European market by adopting a list of authorised health claims which have been scientifically proven. There is an increasing number of studies dealing with consumers' perception of health claims and their understanding all of which have considered different factors influencing consumers' responses. However none of these studies has considered the possible impact of the food label's context factors such as brand, colour, image or the 'bio' sign. The aim of the present study is to determine whether such factors in combination with other possible influential sources of information which are not part of the food label like mass media influence the level of understanding of health claims and the way consumers perceive them. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: 480 respondents from Germany participated in the study. Margarine spread bearing a health claim of a less popular functional ingredient was presented to the participants who were divided into 16 groups (N=30 per group) and each group was presented with a different version of the product based on the variations in the levels of the chosen food label's context factor stimuli. Consumers¿ attitudes towards the health claim were measured as well as the level of their understanding of the claim. A repeated measures factor was also used by giving the respondents to read a newspaper article explaining the benefits of the functional ingredient after which their attitude and understanding were re-evaluated. RESULTS: The newspaper article proved to be substantially determining factor both with respect to positively influencing consumers' attitudes and as a risk factor in their understanding of the claim. The presence of 'bio' sign on the product's label together with a darker colour were also found to have a significant positive influence on consumers' perceived credibility of the health claim. The results also showed that when the bio product was from a famous brand it increased the risk of misunderstanding of the health claim. Additionally, the usage of bright colour and famous brand together as well as bright colour and image in combination were also shown to represent a factor which decreased the probability of misunderstanding.