Determining consumers’ purchase intention for food packaged goods with nutritional claims

: the role of perceived nutritional knowledge and anticipated consumption guilt

Abstract

One of the key drivers of the growth of the global health and wellness food market is anemerging consumer segment that actively seeks healthier food alternatives and engagesin a more nutritionally balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.As expected, new and reformulated products hit the market and food companies are profiting from marketing their products as healthier alternatives.Nonetheless the apparent simplicity in the relationship between products marked as ‘healthy’ and consumers’ purchase intention, this relationship has been pointed out as a non-linear one by past research. Indeed, if consumers anticipated consumption guilt may trigger the selection of food products endorsed with a nutrition claim, many other emotional factors may cause consumers to make unhealthy food choices.This research aims to increase knowledge on consumers' reaction to nutritional claims in food packaging goods, understanding which factors interact or lay behind consumption guilt variation.Accordingly, ten different food shopping scenarios were created, supported by a focus group and a pre-online survey. Subsequently, the hypotheses were tested in an online questionnaire. The conclusions suggest the presence of nutritional claims, on its own, has no influence on the anticipated consumption guilt of consumers. This relationship is, however, mediated by the consumer perception of the self-nutritional knowledge. Also, it is showed anticipated feelings can validate individuals’ behaviors not only in healthy food consumption contexts.

Date of Award	18 Oct 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Daniel Fernandes (Supervisor)