Could confectionery brands benefit from using nutrition and health claims? An empirical study of how nutrition and health claims affect the customer-based brand equity

Abstract

The confectionery sales in Denmark have declined over the last years which make the manufacturers face a challenge in retaining sales. A possible explanation for this decline could be, that the Danish consumers have become more health conscious throughout the last decade. There are several ways that the manufacturers could accede to this, one of them being to provide the packaging with nutrition and/or health claims, which soon, due to a new EU legislation, will be allowed in Denmark. The objective for this master's thesis is, through a quantitative study, to examine, if the respondents' attitudes towards confectionery brands change, when nutrition or health claims respectively are added to the packaging. The purpose of this research is to give an indication of, how the customer-based brand equity is influenced, when making use of claims and whether it would be advisable for the manufacturers to do so. In the study carried out, 40 Danish respondents were asked to evaluate different confectionery brands on the parameters: perceived brand quality, credibility, superiority and purchase intention, when nutrition and health claims were added to images of confectionery. The results showed, that the addition of nutrition and especially health claims had a negative impact on all of the four parameters measured on. The most significant impact was a severe decrease in the perceived brand credibility. This means, that the respondents' attitudes towards the confectionery brands became more negative and that it is very likely, that adding of claims to confectionery would have a negative impact on the overall customer-based brand equity. The findings from this study thus suggest, that the addition of nutrition and health claims decreases the likelihood of the consumers intending to purchase the brands. Seen in the light of this, it would therefore not be advisable for the manufacturers to add any kind of claim (neither nutrition nor health claims) to the packaging, in an attempt to retain sales in Denmark.