Health Innovation in Patty Products. The Role of Food Neophobia in Consumers' Non-Hypothetical Willingness to Pay, Purchase Intention and Hedonic Evaluation.

Zein Kallas,Mauro Vitale,José Maria Gil

doi:10.3390/nu11020444

Zein Kallas, Mauro Vitale + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11020444

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Journal: Nutrients	Publication Date: Feb 20, 2019
Citations: 26	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology

Abstract

Consumers’ personality traits are key factors in understanding consumers’ choice and acceptance for health innovations in food products, in particular, food neophobia (FN). The patty product as a traditional pork product (TPP) with two innovative traditional pork products (ITPP) from the untapped pig breed (Porc Negre Mallorquí) in Spain were analysed. Patties were enriched with Porcini (Boletus edulis) using the claim “enriched with a natural source of dietary fiber Beta glucans that may contribute to improve our defence system” (ITPP1) and enriched with blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) using the claim “enriched with a natural source of antioxidant that may help to prevent cardiovascular diseases” (ITPP2). Two non-hypothetical discrete choice experiments were applied to investigate the importance of FN in consumers’ purchase intention (PI) and willingness to pay (WTP) before and after tasting the products. Results showed that the TPP and the ITPP2 received higher than expected PI and WTP. However, after tasting the products, consumers exhibited lower WTP for all ITPP showing the prevalence of the sensory experience on health innovation. The FN was highly related to WTP before the hedonic evaluation. However, it turned out to be non-significant, showing a homogenising role of the sensory experience in reducing the FN impact.

Highlights

Food health innovations are becoming determinant factors affecting consumers’ food choice.Consumers’ preference and acceptance of food innovations are multidimensional and rely on a mixture of the product intrinsic and extrinsic cues, expectations, socio-economic characteristics, and attitudes [1,2]
Results showed that the low food neophobia (FN) consumers showed the highest expected and experienced purchase intention (PI) for innovative traditional pork products (ITPP) and the traditional pork product (TPP) compared to the high FN consumers
Significant differences were found for the expected and experienced PI of the ITPP2 (31.77% compared to 14.32% and 27.60% compared to 16.76%, respectively) but only for the expected PI of the ITPP1 (12.50% compared to 7.27%)

Summary

Introduction

Food health innovations are becoming determinant factors affecting consumers’ food choice. Consumers’ preference and acceptance of food innovations are multidimensional and rely on a mixture of the product intrinsic and extrinsic cues, expectations, socio-economic characteristics, and attitudes [1,2]. Personality traits [3], in particular, food neophobia (FN) [4,5] is one of the most relevant key factors. FN is an individual-specific trait [6] that describes human unwillingness to consume unfamiliar food [7]. FN has been examined extensively in recent decades [8], the study of the relationship between FN and consumers’ food purchase intention and willingness to pay in a “real”. Research that associated the FN trait to food choice have used hypothetical survey frameworks.

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