The Effects of Nutrition and Health Claim Information on Consumers' Sensory Preferences and Willingness to Pay

Xinyi Hong; Chenguang Li; Liming Wang; Zhifeng Gao; Mansi Wang; Haikuan Zhang; Frank J Monahan

doi:10.3390/foods11213460

The Effects of Nutrition and Health Claim Information on Consumers' Sensory Preferences and Willingness to Pay

Foods. 2022 Nov 1;11(21):3460. doi: 10.3390/foods11213460.

Authors

Xinyi Hong^{1

2}, Chenguang Li², Liming Wang^{3

4}, Zhifeng Gao⁵, Mansi Wang¹, Haikuan Zhang⁶, Frank J Monahan²

Affiliations

¹ School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Institute, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
² School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin, D04V1W8 Dublin, Ireland.
³ School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China.
⁴ Irish Institute for Chinese Studies, University College Dublin, D04V1W8 Dublin, Ireland.
⁵ Department Food and Resource Economics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
⁶ School of Economics and Management, East China University of Technology, Nanchang 330000, China.

Abstract

As marketing tools, nutrition claims (NCs) and health claims (HCs) can be used to convey the nutritional properties and health benefits of food to consumers, but their respective effects on consumers' perceptions of healthier meat products are inconsistent in the literature. Using a physical prototype of omega-3-enriched sausages as a research interest, this paper explores how HCs and NCs differently influence consumers' sensory preferences and willingness to pay (WTP). Sensory tests were carried out among 330 participants, followed by a choice-based conjoint (CBC) experiment to measure consumers' WTP. Results indicate that, in comparison with the uninformed condition, labeling an omega-3 nutrition claim increased consumers' sensory liking for omega-3-enriched sausages in the attributes of appearance and texture. Moreover, consumers were willing to pay more for healthier sausages, but labeling HCs did not significantly improve participants' WTP for omega-3-enriched sausages more than NCs. Hence, HCs did not significantly outperform NCs, when it comes to positively influencing consumers' sensory liking and paying intentions for omega-3-enriched sausages. The findings of this study have implications for the meat industry in developing healthier sausage formulations with greater likelihood of success in the market.

Keywords: choice-based conjoint experiment; health claim; nutrition claim; payment estimation; sensory test.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Food Institutional Research Measure of the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine grant number Project 11/F/035. The APC was funded by the school of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Guangzhou University.