I Believe It Is Healthy-Impact of Extrinsic Product Attributes in Demonstrating Healthiness of Functional Food Products.

Brigitta Plasek,Ágoston Temesi,Zoltán Lakner

doi:10.3390/nu13103518

Brigitta Plasek, Ágoston Temesi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13103518

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Abstract

Due to the high proportion of impulse purchases and the short time devoted to purchase decisions, packaging and other extrinsic attributes are becoming increasingly important in demonstrating the health benefits of a functional food item to consumers as plausibly as possible. Our research aims at identifying the role of extrinsic features (claims related to ingredients and health claims, organic or domestic origin, as well as the shape and color of packaging), gathered in the course of in-depth literature analysis, in the case of a functional smoothie. Our online consumer questionnaire was completed by 633 respondents, and the answers were assessed by choice based conjoint analysis. Our results show that each examined attribute plays a role in the assessment of health effects. The color blue has the biggest impact on making the consumer believe in the health benefits of the product. This is followed by the indication of organic origin, then the statement emphasizing the natural quality of the ingredients. The assessment of the specific extrinsic attributes is affected by consumers’ general health interest level, their involvement with food items, and their various demographic features.

Highlights

A significant proportion of purchases are impulse purchases, and packaging plays a key role in this type of purchase [1,2,3]
We examined six extrinsic attributes: claims related to ingredients, organic origin, health claims, the shape and color of packaging, and domestic origin
In our research, following an analysis of the literature, five characteristics that influence the perception of a product’s health impact have been identified, namely the shape and color of the packaging, health claims, claims related to the ingredients of the product and the impact of domestic origin

Summary

Introduction

A significant proportion of purchases are impulse purchases, and packaging plays a key role in this type of purchase [1,2,3]. Research has shown that consumer assessment of the health impact of a product is influenced by several extrinsic [18] and intrinsic attributes [19], as well as non-product-specific factors: e.g., prior knowledge of the consumer [20,21,22]. Such an intrinsic factor is the various ingredients found in a product [23,24,25,26,27,28,29] as well as the taste and other sensory features of the product [30,31,32,33,34]. Consumers tend to use extrinsic characteristics instead of other factors as an indicator of product quality [35]

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