The moderating role of health consciousness and brand familiarity on the effectiveness of claims on packaging

As over half of the world’s population is overweight and obesity numbers still rise, the topic of healthy food decision becomes more and more urgent. The use of claims on food packaging is a widely used method by marketeers in order to attract customers. Claims can come in several forms. In this research the impact of health, nutrition and unrelated claims are researched. Existing literature regarding this topic mainly studies the direct impact of claims whereas this research is about the moderating role of health consciousness and brand familiarity on the effectiveness of claims on packaging. 155 participants filled out a survey where they answered question regarding these concepts. Results showed that customers prefer the claims with nutritional information followed by health claims over the unrelated claim. Health consciousness strengthens this preference for nutritional claims. No interaction effect was found regarding brand familiarity. A suggestion for further research would be to investigate this concept in a setting where brands are presented as they are in a real-life grocery store in order to investigate whether brand familiarity is influencing the effectiveness of claims on packaging.