The impact of nutrition claims on purchase behavior for food products

Faced by increasing emphasis on health, manufacturers try to persuade consumers by using nutrition claims on their packaging. Although experimental research suggests that such claims influence consumer behavior in different ways, it remains unknown whether and to what extent they have an effect in actual grocery situations with large amounts of information to process. In this study, the authors investigate the effect of presence (stressing the presence of a healthy ingredient) and absence nutrition claims (stressing the absence of an unhealthy ingredient) on consumer purchase behavior using UK household scanner purchase data from 17 product categories during the years 2009–2012. They find that presence nutrition claims increase choice while absence nutrition claims decrease choice. Both types of nutrition claims do not influence the quantity purchased. Importantly, a nutrition claim’s effectiveness depends on SKU and category characteristics. Presence nutrition claims are more effective in healthy categories, and absence nutrition claims for SKUs with fewer promotions. At the same time, both nutrition claims are less effective for higher priced SKUs and more effective for brands with higher advertising spending. Absence nutrition claims are more effective when fewer SKUs in the category have the same type of nutrition claim, but presence nutrition claims benefit when more SKUs have the same type of nutrition claim.