The Impact of Nutrition Claims on SKU Choice: An Investigation of the Effect of SKU and Category Characteristics

Category: Marketing Seminar
When: 15 January 2018
, 12:15
 - 13:30
Where: Campus Westend, RuW 1.201
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Peter C. Verhoef (University of Groningen)

 

Niels Holtrop (Maastricht University), Kathleen Cleeren (KU Leuven), Kelly Geyskens (Maastricht University), Peter C. Verhoef (University of Groningen) 

In the face of increasing emphasis on healthy lifestyles in the marketplace, manufacturers try to persuade consumers by using nutrition claims on their packaging. While experimental research suggests that such claims influence consumer behavior in a variety of ways, it remains unknown whether and to what extent such claims have an effect in actual grocery choice situations with a large variety of SKUs. In this study, we investigate the effect of nutrition claims on consumer choice using an SKU choice model calibrated on UK household scanner data from 29 food product categories. Our results indicate that, on average, nutrition claims have a negative effect on consumer choice. The results also indicated a lot of variability across SKUs and categories. Our moderation analysis identified factors that function as indicators for the success or failure of nutrition claims on products.  Our results show that claims are more effective for strong brands and SKUs with low discounts, while they are also more effective in healthy categories, categories with a high advertising intensity, a small claim penetration, and important categories.

 

Keywords: Nutrition claims, SKU choice, health

More details on Prof. Dr. Peter C. Verhoef can be found at: http://www.rug.nl/staff/p.c.verhoef/

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