16 pages., Via online journal, Communicating the process quality of ethically produced food effectively is of highest interest to policy makers, organizations, retailers and producers in order to enhance ethical food production and increase ethical label use. The objective of this paper is to unveil the effectiveness of different communication treatments in regard to changing purchase behavior of different consumer groups. Different communication material for beef produced according to consumer expectations was compiled and applied in a consumer survey—incorporating a choice experiment and a questionnaire—with 676 respondents in three cities of Germany. A Latent Class Mixed Logit Model was basis to identify different consumer segments and their response to the different communication treatments. The effects of different communication treatments unveil the importance to address information in an objective manner. Target groups could be enlarged through the assessment of clear, objective information. Moreover, most consumers were more likely to refrain from choosing a cheap beef product from conventional, barn-based rearing. Hence, consumers might be interested in reducing their overall consumption of beef and prefer the consumption of high value ethical beef with less frequency. Producers, market actors and policy makers should realize that a high share of consumers, not only smaller target groups, value ethical food and may be ready to change their consumption habits, if they are adequately informed.
12 pages., ISSN 2141-2421, Via online journal., The overarching aim of this paper is to examine empirical findings on the arena of consumers’ behavior and attitude towards intake of street-foods (SFs) and fast foods (FFs) status as well as associated risks of consumption in China. Presently, consuming SFs and FFs have become a popular trend and is counted as the manifestation of modernity in most fast growing countries, for instance, China. The SFs and FFs are believed to be a panacea to the major socio-economic problems for countries having a large population. Over one-quarter of the century FFs and SFs become rapidly expanded in China through the quick service provision of already prepared foods with reasonable prices and source of employment for swarming open country and city inhabitants end to end to its supply. FFs and SFs are the most preferred by consumers because of safety issue, reasonable price, ready-made nature, easily accessible, portability, and so on. Concurrently, the nutritional and health concerns in China revealed that the government is very committed to quarantine and certifies FFs and SFs of food safety and public health, particularly after melamine was detected in milk in the year 2008. This later stimulated the Chinese regime to put into practice food safety law (FSL) in 2009 next to food hygiene law (FHL). FFs and SFs consumers in China are very conscious of food quality and give credit for safety than purchasing prices. Broadly speaking, most examined the papers indulged that FF and SF choice rely on ‘safety first’ by consumers in China. To sustain vendors stock and satisfy consumers’ demand for SF and FF, avoiding health risks, change in the existing perception and trust building is a priority issue.
24pgs, Increasingly, the health claims made by food products focus on the marketing of specific molecular enrichments. Research exploring consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for health claims assumes that individuals hold perfect information on the benefits of the enrichment, and that their valuations depend solely on whether or not they need to improve their health. While health interventions are aimed at individuals at higher health risk, consumers may be unaware of the health risks that they face, limiting the effectiveness of a generic targeting strategy. Using an orthogonal experimental design, we explore the impact of two factors on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment in eggs: whether the information is person-specific or generic; and the presence of a health claim explaining the vitamin D enrichment. Results indicate that it is the provision of information, not the health claim, that influences WTP. Both generic and personalised information lead to similar increases in the WTP for vitamin D enrichment. While we only observe a direct effect of generic information on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment, personal information may also operate by increasing the perceived risk of vitamin D deficiency. Our results support the use of personalised health information during the choice task as a means of increasing the sales of healthy products.
