Health claims and consumer behaviour

Healthiness is a major quality dimension when consumers evaluate food products, and healthy eating has become a major topic in the public discourse on food and drink. As a consequence, health properties of food products play an increasing role in product development and marketing of new food products. However, health properties differ fundamentally from sensory properties of food products in that they cannot be directly experienced by consumers. Instead, they have to be communicated. The question how health properties of food products can and should be communicated to consumers is therefore a crucial question in the development of new and more healthy food products. New EU legislation on health claims will give new possibilities for making health-related statements on food labels and other market communication. But how will this communication affect consumer behaviour?

There has been some consumer research on the effects of health claims, and more research is underway, including a major study on consumer perception of health claims in the Nordic countries. Research that has been published to date has by no means been conclusive. Qualitative research has shown considerable confusion and contradictory reactions among consumers, and has also demonstrated how consumers integrate health claims into their own idiosyncratic belief systems in order to attach meaning to them. Previous research also indicated that the effects of health claims have to be seen in the context of other information available on the label and elsewhere. Different formats of health claims, different framings, use of qualifiers and various strengths of claims have been tested in quantitative studies. Results have not always supported common intuition; for example stronger claims do not generally seem to lead to stronger effects on consumer behaviour.

This presentation will summarize extant research and provide implications for the use of health claims.