Customer value toward innovative food products: Empirical evidence from two international markets

Abstract

Food technologies often have an ambivalent effect on customer value perceptions toward innovative food products. While objective benefits may contribute positively to customer value perceptions, subjective negative evaluations may subtract value. In this paper we propose a model and provide empirical evidence on how customer value is constructed and its relationship with willingness to pay in the context of innovative food products. We test our model in a cross-sectional study across two international markets (the UK and China; N = 1004) and two innovative food products. Our results show that, in the context of innovative food products, customer value is constructed as a trade-off between perceived values that individuals assign to the product and perceived costs that consumers experience. Specifically, perceived values have a positive and dominant effect on customer value in both markets. We further show that the central role of customer value on willingness to pay is not universal and may vary across international markets, with the positive effect of values on willingness to pay being mediated by customer value only in China. Finally, from types of costs purchase costs are found to subtract customer value and only in the UK, thus highlighting their role as being context-specific.