Consumer Trust in Chicken Brands: A Structural Equation Model

Abstract

The issues of what drives consumers to trust the food industry in general and food brands specifically, and the outcomes of consumer trust, are increasingly of interest to food industry stakeholders and to policy makers. The extant knowledge of trust in food brands, and in particular the empirical investigation of brand trust, is relatively underresearched in food economics. Research examining institutional trust has been carried out in sociology, marketing, and political science, while a limited number of studies to date have investigated the degree of consumer trust in food. This paper extends previous research on consumer trust in the context of food by developing a conceptual framework based on insights from the trust literature that explores the drivers and outcomes of consumer confidence in food quality and food safety. The conceptual framework is tested with a Structural Equation Model using survey data from a sample of Canadian consumers of fresh chicken. Model results indicate that both trust in the food industry (i.e., food companies and food retailers) and brand trust bolster consumer confidence in credence attributes. Furthermore, personal traits, such as risk aversion and ethically motivated behavior, moderate the relationship between brand trust and consumer confidence in credence qualities.