본 연구는 건강이미지가 서로 다른 두 제품의 영양강조표시가 소비자들의 제품평가 및 질병리스크지각에 미치는영향을 조사하였다. 첫번째 조사에서는, 제품의 건강이미지에 따라 제품의 건강신념에 대한 영양강조표시의 효과가다르다는 것이 밝혀졌다. 건강이미지 제품은 포지티브영양소를 강화해도 제품에 대한 건강신념은 보통제품과 차이가 없었고, 네거티브영양소를 저감시키면 오히려 보통제품보다 건강신념이 낮아졌다. 비건강이미지 제품은 포지티브영양소 강화와 네거티브영양소 저감 모두 제품에 대한 건강신념이 향상되었고, 네거티브영양소 저감보다는 포지티브영양소 강화가 더 건강신념이 높게 평가되었다.
두번째 연구는 영양강조표시가 제품에 대한 건강신념, 브랜드태도, 질병리스크지각 및 구매의도에 미치는 영향을실험을 통해 검증했다. 영양건강관여를 독립변수로 추가해 분석한 결과, 건강이미지 제품에 대한 건강신념은 첫번째조사와 동일한 결과였으나, 비건강이미지 제품의 건강신념에 대한 가설은 기각되었다. 식품선택의 결정요인인 맛에있어서는 영양건강관여에 따라 건강이미지가 다른 제품에 있어 영양강조표시가 된 제품에 대한 맛의 지각이 달랐다.
브랜드태도에 있어서는, 영양건강관여가 낮을 때, 건강이미지 제품인 우유는 라벨간에 브랜드태도의 차이가 없었고,비건강이미지 제품인 아이스크림의 경우, ‘보통’제품과 ‘고칼슘’제품 간의 차이는 없었고, ‘저지방’제품은 ‘보통’제품과‘고칼슘’제품보다 비호의적인 브랜드태도를 보였다. 영양건강관여가 높을 때는 제품의 건강이미지에 관계없이, ‘저지방’제품은 ‘보통’제품보다 브랜드태도가 낮았고, ‘보통’제품과 ‘고칼슘’제품의 차이는 없었다. 질병리스크지각에 있어서는 포지티브영양소를 강화한 영양강조표시의 효과는 없었고, 네거티브영양소 저감 표시만이 ‘비만’과 ‘메타볼릭신드롬’에 영향을 미쳤다.
Many brands have recently paid attention to advertising nutrition and health promotion effects of food products through including a nutrient claim or health claim, either implicitly or explicitly, in their food package and advertisement in accordance with consumers’ awareness of food safety and needs for healthy foods. Consumers tend to recognize a food product in low or none of negative nutrition (e.g., fat) or high positive nutrition (e.g., calcium) as a healthy and safe food. This implies that a food that lowers a negative nutrient or is fortified with a positive nutrient contributes to creating a healthy image of the food, which may lead consumers to purchase the food product. The current study sought to examine how nutrition claims for healthy (milk) and unhealthy (ice cream) image products impacted consumers’ product evaluations and perceptions of disease-related risks.
This study consists of survey and experimental research. We conducted a survey to examine whether strengthening or lowering a nutrient impact increases healthy beliefs about a food product. The analysis sample consisted of 141 students attending K University in Tokyo,Japan. Three sets of two-way analysis of variance were used to predict healthy benefit, diet benefit and taste aspects of consumers’ evaluation on products from healthy image (i.e.,healthy and unhealthy image between subjects) and nutrition claims (i.e., no claim (N), low fat claim (LF) and high calcium claim (HCa) within subjects). Findings indicated that strengthening a positive nutrition −high calcium claim–did not improve the healthiness of milk, whereas reducing a negative nutrition−low fat claim−contributed to a lower level of health beliefs compared to a normal product. For ice cream, both claims improved the healthiness of product with a stronger influence of the high calcium claim product on consumers’ positive evaluation than the low fat claim.
In addition, we performed experimental research to test hypotheses drawn from finding of prior survey, adding brand attitudes, purchase intention and perceptions of disease-related risk as dependent variables. One hundred sixty-five undergraduate students at K University in Tokyo, Japan participated in this experiment. Three-way analysis of variance was to examine effects of healthy images (i.e., healthy and unhealthy images), nutrition claims(i.e., N, LF and HCa) and consumers’ nutrition-health involvement (i.e., higher and lower involvement) on the dependent variables. We found that effects of nutrition claims on consumers’ health beliefs about products, brand attitudes, purchase intentions and perceptions of diseaserelated risks after controlling for nutrition-health involvement. For milk having a healthy image, the low fat claim effect remained significant in predicting consumers’ healthy beliefs after accounting for the effect of nutrition-health involvement, while the high calcium claim was not significant. However, ice cream, an unhealthy image product, was not associated with consumers’ healthy beliefs when nutrition-health involvement was controlled.
In perceiving taste, effects of nutrition claims differed by nutrition-health involvement for products with healthy and unhealthy images. Further, nutrition-health involvement impacted the association between the nutrition claims and brand attitudes for milk and ice cream.
When consumers’ involvement in nutrition and health was high, for milk and ice cream the low fat claim was negatively related to brand attitudes whereas the high calcium claim had no association. With low nutrition-health involvement, the association between the nutrition claims and brand attitudes was significant only for the unhealthy image product, ice cream;neither high calcium nor low fat claim was related to brand attitudes for milk. Finally, reduction in a negative nutrition, the low fat claim, significantly predicted a decreased risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome, while enhancing a positive nutrition, high calcium claim,had no association with a perceived risk of disease.
