Making animal welfare matter : Positioning animal welfare as personally relevant

Abstract

Despite the positive consumer attitudes towards animal welfare, and an increasing supply of animal welfare enhanced meat, consumers still mainly opt for conventional meat instead of meat produced with higher animal welfare standards. This thesis argues that consumers may do so because they must trade off personally relevant benefits, such as low price or convenience, for animal welfare when buying animal welfare enhanced meat. It provides theoretical arguments, as well as empirical evidence that marketing strategies can be effective in encouraging consumers to switch to animal welfare enhanced meat if they position animal welfare as personally relevant (i.e., they emphasize personally relevant benefits) and provide a guarantee for the claimed animal welfare. Specifically, strategies invoking positive feelings and provoking curiosity are found effective to encourage consumers to buy free-range meat, although their effectiveness is contingent on the guarantee provided by a certified label and may be limited for consumers having conflicting attitudes towards meat (e.g., by associating eating meat with positive and negative outcomes). Some care should therefore be taken when designing awareness campaigns about the effects of meat consumption and animal welfare as they could potentially discourage consumers to switch to more animal-friendly products.