Factors influencing consumers’ gaze and purchase behavior for food products labeled with nutrition and health claims

Short Summary: The labeling of food products with a nutrition or a health claim is a widespread practice in the EU. These claims are short sentences on the front of food packages which highlight positive nutritional characteristics or beneficial health effects for the body. Research on nutrition and health claims shows a lack of consensus on whether these claims have a positive or a negative effect on consumers’ preferences and purchase behavior. Therefore, the research objective of this dissertation was to investigate factors which influence consumers’ gaze and purchase behavior for food products labeled with nutrition and health claims. Gaze behavior was included in this research, because visual attention towards a claim labeled on food packages is a precondition for its influence on the purchase decision. Initially, a comprehensive literature review was performed in which several factors regarding the research objective were found to be promising. Based on these findings, an empirical study was designed. In a close-to-realistic shopping situation, participants were able to purchase food products labeled with a nutrition, a health, or a taste claim. A taste claim refers to the food product’s taste and was part of this study because it served as a control group compared to the nutrition/health claim. Orange juice and milk chocolate were used as the two product categories because they differ in their perceived healthiness. During the shopping situation, the participants wore eye tracking glasses which recorded their gaze behavior. After the purchase, the participants filled out a questionnaire which provided information about their nutrition knowledge and health motivation. The study was conducted in a German city and participants were approached on its main shopping promenade which yielded usable data from 156 participants for the analyses. The findings showed that each claim type was noticed by at least 85% of the participants. The longer a participant looked at a certain claim, the more likely the participant was to purchase the respective product. A nutrition claim led to the largest share of purchases when labeled on orange juices whereas a taste claim led to the largest share of purchases on milk chocolates Orange juices and milk chocolates labeled with a health claim were the least purchased products. Consumers with higher health motivation and higher nutrition knowledge looked longer at the three claim types, however, these consumer characteristics had no influence on the purchase of products labeled with claims. Implications for policymakers, marketers and further research are given.