- In order to control obesity populations, the government has launched public campaigns that educate consumers on how to choose healthier options. For example, Ecuador and Chile imposed strict regulations on food manufacturers and designed specific types of traffic light nutritional labels (TLLs). Studies have shown that TLLs and other types of warning labels produced mixed results and does not really do what it intended to do. They found that brand familiarity and brand trust together create a shield that protects the product from being evaluated as unhealthy, even in presence of warnings from TLLs. The following sections show their investigation.
- ‘From a food manufacturer’s point of view, then, presenting nutritional information can be interpreted as a strategy to gain consumers’ trust and confidence by disclosing product attribute information, as is the purpose of displaying TLLs.” The stream of research reports mixed results when accessing the effectiveness of TLLs in persuading consumers to select healthier options. Findings suggest that a familiar brand is more accessible factor in a consumer’s memory and that this effect increases the likelihood in product choices. Level of attention also influences consumers’ use of nutritional information. “when consumers spend more time evaluating a food product and the brand is unfamiliar, they will rely on the most accessible and diagnostic cue: the traffic light nutritional label warning.” The relationship of consumers food purchase intentions is mediated by brand trust.
- This section shows an overview of studies. Study 1 tests main effect of traffic light label’s presence. Study 2 replicates the results of study 1 using consumer sample from Chile. Study 3 replicate the results from study 2 using a sample of Ecuadorian consumers and testing three-way interaction effect among TLLs, brand familiarity and attention level. Study 4 replicates the overall findings using a moderated mediated approach with a sample of consumers from UK.
- Conclusions of study 1 signals the importance of exploring what other factors besides brand familiarity influence consumers to ignore warnings of TLLs.
- Results of study 2 suggest that for familiar brands, TLL’s warnings produce no effect in consumer purchase.
- “The findings from Study 3 support the prediction that when consumers are evaluating food choices with familiar brands, the brand becomes more diagnostic and serves as an important cue for consumers to infer its quality and likeability and form their purchase intentions. However, when consumers evaluate food choices with unfamiliar brands, the traffic light label becomes more diagnostic, as consumers follow the warning that the traffic light label gives them.”
- Trust in a brand fuels consumers positive evaluation of the product even if TLL warnings are there.
- TLLs create a double burden for small food manufactures and is basically not useful because it does not have any evidence of its effective communication.
- The study increases the understanding of how nutritional labels influence consumers.
- Findings of this research expand our current understanding of nutritional labels. TLLs in combination with brand familiarity mislead consumers to select healthier food products.
ENG 2100: Writing 1 with Jay Thompson
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