Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Business, Business & Economics, Health symbol, Front-of-package nutritional information, Food purchases, Lay beliefs, NUTRITION INFORMATION, CONSUMER CHOICE, POTENTIAL CONSUMER, TASTY INTUITION, UNHEALTHY, PURCHASE, PREMIUM, SEARCH, ONLINE, LABELS, 1503 Business and Management, 1505 Marketing, 1506 Tourism, Marketing, 3506 Marketing, 3507 Strategy, management and organisational behaviour

Abstract:

Manufacturers increasingly adopt health symbols, which translate overall product healthiness into a single symbol, to communicate about the overall healthiness of their grocery products. This study examines how the performance implications of adding a front-of-pack health symbol to a product vary across products. We study the sales impact of a government-supported health symbol program in 29 packaged categories, using over four years of scanner data. The results indicate that health symbols are most impactful when they positively disconfirm pre-existing beliefs that a product is not among the healthiest products within the category. More specifically, we find that health symbols are more effective for (i) products with a front-of-pack taste claim, (ii) lower priced products, and (iii) private label products. Furthermore, these results are more pronounced in healthier categories than in unhealthier categories. Our findings imply that health symbols can help overcome lay beliefs among consumers regarding a product’s overall healthiness. As such, adding a health symbol provides easy-to-process information about product healthiness for the consumer and can increase product sales for the manufacturer.