Health Branding in the Consumer Food Marketplace

An increasing complexity in the food marketplace makes healthy food choices more difficult for consumers. Several studies suggest that consumers therefore seem to rely on heuristics instead of computing all product attributes. Based on a survey (n=504) covering three different food products, four consumer segments with different levels of demand for food health branding were identified. The results suggest that discriminating constructs such as product-specific food health information seeking, general food health involvement, product-specific food health involvement, product-specific food health competency, and postpurchase stress are able to explain a substantial proportion of the variance in demand for food health branding.