Food Products Consumption Pattern Based on the Consumers Appraisal and Evaluation - Research Proposal Example

Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction 1 2.0 Research problem 2 3.0 Research rationale 2 4.0 Research objectives 3 5.0 Overview of the theories and hypotheses 4 6.0 Overview of methodology 6 6.1 First Study 6 6.1.1 Findings 7 6.2 The second study 8 6.2.1 Findings 9 6.3 The third study 10 6.3.1 Findings 10 6.4 The fourth study 10 6.4.1 Findings 11 7.0 Theoretical contributions 11 8.0 Managerial implications 12 9.0 Limitations of the research and new directions for future research 14 Bibliography 15 1.0 Introduction The unwritten rule in the successful marketing of any product is the accurate comprehension of consumer behaviour. This timeless fundamental concept has therefore prompted extensive research over the years in an attempt to understand the consumers’ behaviour. Many models and theories have been put up to provide a reliable framework that provides credible grounds for explaining consumer behaviour. Regardless of this endeavour, a clear understanding of the consumer behaviour still remains an elusive issue as human behaviour still remains an enigma therefore making it difficult to grasp. Consumer behaviour can be defined as the criterion that a presumably rational consumer will use to evaluate a product and the factors that will influence their choice of consumption given a wide range of alternatives and products. Consumer behaviour is a wide scope; however, it will vary depending on the nature of products. Up to date, little research has been conducted on the relevance of consumer behaviour on the choice of food products. In an attempt to shed more light on this concept, this paper seeks to review a journal article that expounds more on the food products consumption pattern based on the consumer’s appraisal and evaluation. 2.0 Research problem The journal article under review is titled The Impact of Product Name on Dieters" and Nondieters Food Evaluations and Consumption by Irmak, Vallen and Robinson (2011). This article is based on a consumer’s perception of food products due to dietary concerns and how the perceived healthfulness of the product will in turn influence the perceived taste of the product, which ultimately affects the consumer pattern. The journal article aims at addressing the problem of existing limited information regarding the correlation between the dietary concerns and the consumption patterns. It does so by providing linking factors, such as the perceived healthfulness of food products, taste perceptions and the consumption patterns. The article also aims at providing further knowledge on the effects that a product name will have on dieters and non-dieters evaluation of food products and ultimately their choice of food product. 3.0 Research rationale The rationale behind this study is the fact that consumers health consciousness has increased over the years (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). This has created a niche in the market with most companies rushing in to fill this gap by offering a wide variety of healthy products. It is therefore imperative that companies understand the consumer behaviour and its effect on the consumer’s consumption pattern so that they can come up with strategic and tactical marketing strategies in a highly competitive and crowded food market (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). The journal article under review serves both the interest of companies and public health bodies. It provides careful look into the impact that a product name will have on a person’s food evaluation and consumption pattern; critically important to every stakeholder in the food industry. This research helps understand the importance that a certain market segment attaches to product names and therefore regulatory bodies and public policies can create strategic policies that ensure a consumer makes an informed choice based on their accurate perception and information regarding the products. This research also provides important marketing strategies to companies in the food industries by providing information that can be used to alter consumers’ purchasing options. Most people will base the quality of the food product on the perceived nutritional value. However, the nature of the health products in the food market makes them credence goods since the consumer has no direct way of proving the stated benefits (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). In regard to this fact, the journal article provides information on how consumers will process information prior to purchasing any food product. 4.0 Research objectives The objective of this paper is to determine and expound more on the individual and contextual features that will affect the evaluation and consumption of a particular food product. In doing so, the researchers expound more on the widely accepted views regarding the perceived healthfulness and the process through which this factor affects the consumption pattern. This objective is broken down into smaller goals, which include: Determining the effect that a product name will have on a perceived healthfulness and taste of the product by both dieters and non-dieters; and Determining the extent and the cause for non-dieters insensitivity to food cues 5.0 Overview of the theories and hypotheses There are many salient features about a food product which provide important cues that can be used in the evaluation of a particular food product. This information includes the stated consumption of the product and the brand image (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). However, dieters will base their assessment of a food product based on the product names. A dieter’s main concern with regard to food products is primarily whether the food is healthy or not (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). Dieters’ consistent and perpetual pre-occupation with their eating habits and body image subconsciously makes them focus on the unhealthy food products in an effort to keep off such products. This chronic attention will over time make them less apt to undergoing a careful and high elaboration of other factors, such as the given product information. Dieters will instead revert to a quick mental process, which utilises the most prominent features, such as the product name (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). This means that dieters will resort to processing of information heuristically. This is a process that requires little cognitive resources therefore making dieters in this category to be highly susceptible to food cues. This kind of information processing allows most dieters to perceive food product with information that may serve to either persuade or dissuade the consumer from making a purchase. This kind of response is not indicated for food products with healthy names (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). Dieters will then use this as a scapegoat to consume more food products and will use the fact that they perceive these food products as healthy to justify their behaviour. These theoretical principles are based on the cognitive theory and the theory of perception. The cognitive theory is based on the presumption that human beings are rational. They will therefore process the information logically before taking a stand (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). In this case, cognitive behaviour is depicted in the form of dietary tendency, which are powerful tools in the evaluation of food products. People with a high need for cognition will seek extensive information or a high elaboration regarding the food product while people with low need for cognition will require low elaboration therefore resulting to the use of heuristics in basing their decisions. It is the level of cognition that will determine whether a person, in this context a dieter and a non-dieter, will either use systematic processing of information, which requires one to pay attention to product information, or resort to heuristically processing of information (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). The cognitive theory is further extended by coupling it with the theory of perception. This introduces the concept of bottom up processing of information and top down processing of information. Perception can be defined as the process by which a person selects, reorganises and interprets received information in order to deduce meaning (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). The information received is subjective to the person’s beliefs and prior knowledge. This is of interest to this research due to the fact that a person will interpret the information in a manner that suits his beliefs, values and norms. This may result to distortion of the information and selective retention of the information that serves his or her needs (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). Bottom up processing of information will involve careful scrutiny of the given particular information before making a decision while top down processing will involve basing decisions on the most salient features, such as product name.The latter is therefore to a large extent part of heuristic processing of information. Non dieters on the other hand exhibit indifference to food cues, such as the product name. This is because they keep an open mind regarding food products therefore offering them a wide range of alternatives to choose from (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). Naturally, selecting a food product from a wide range of products calls for higher cognitive resources. The researchers however state that this indifference does not arise because non dieters will systematically process information (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). It is mainly because they lack the motivation and the driving force, which might influence them to subconsciously view food products as unhealthy. The research is based on the hypothesis that dieters tend to perceive a food product with an unhealthy product name to be unhealthy and less tasty. This does not apply to products with healthy food names: food products in this category are not subjects to dietary considerations as they are generally considered to be healthy (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). A noteworthy point is the assumption that generally most dieters will perceive a food products based on the most salient feature, which is the product name. 6.0 Overview of methodology The research involves four studies with each study acting as the building block of the subsequent study. 6.1 First Study In the first study, seventy six participants with fifty five being female were subjected to an interview where they were asked to assume that they required choosing a new item in a restaurant item.The item was labelled either as daily salad special or daily pasta special. The name of the former item inherently implies that it is a healthy food product while the latter casts doubts on its nutritional value. To lend credibility to this test and reliability of the findings in reaffirming the stated hypotheses was the fact that both products were in actual sense identical in that they contained the same ingredients. The participants were further requested to respond to the cognitive behavioural scale whose main aim was to find out their consumption patterns based on dietary tendency. The researchers did not solely depend on the product name they also incorporated the perceived level of satiation that the people expected to obtain by choosing either of the new items. This was achieved by attaching a picture of each of the new item (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). 6.1.1 Findings In order to draw a correlation between perceived healthfulness of the product stemming from the product name and the dietary concerns the average body mass of the participants was calculated and it was found that the average BMI of the participants was overweight (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). Using regression analysis in the analysis of the results, the findings indicated that there was no correlation between perceived satiation and product name and the dietary tendency. The calculated BMI was a covariance to show the extent of correlation between two random variables: product name, dietary tendency and perceived healthfulness of the product. Assigning an unhealthy element to a product consequently resulted to perceived healthfulness of the product with the dietary tendency playing a great role in the drawing of this inference about that food product. Conversely, when a food product was labelled using a healthy name, this translated into perceived healthfulness and in this scenario the dietary tendency had no effect on the consumption pattern (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). The findings were consistent with the hypotheses and theoretical principles stated earlier regarding the effect of product names on the consumption patterns of dieters. 6.2 The second study The second study was mainly aimed at identifying individual factors that might also influence a person’s choice of product. This study introduced a dispositional variable, which is generally an internal factor that affects an individual’s behaviour. The variable was need for cognition. This study was based on the principle that high need for recognition will pave way for a high elaboration while low need for cognition will entail low elaboration. People in the latter category will use heuristics which is a mental shortcut and a faster way of tackling a problem while people in the former category will use the product information given instead of entirely relying on cues such as the product name (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). In this study, 142 undergraduate students were required to participate in this experiment as part of their course requirement. Similar to the first study, the participants were provided with a food product that was labelled as either fruit chew or candy chew. They were then asked to review the product information and rate the product based on their appraisal of the product information. The participants’ behavioural tendency was evaluated using the cognitive behavioural scale and the participants were further asked to complete the NFC scale. The researchers used a manipulation check item, which required the participants to identify the product ingredients and an accurate description illustrated the participant’s knowledge of the product information. This goes to show that the results obtained can be viewed as credible as the manipulation check item ensured that participants made an informed stand rather than one based on misconceptions (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). 6.2.1 Findings Regression analysis was used in the analysis of the data collected from the participants. The findings indicated that perceived healthfulness from the consumption of the either of the particular food product was not affected by the product name, dietary concerns or the need for cognition (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). These findings were similar to those of the first study, which indicated no relationship between the perceived fullness and the dietary concerns or the product name. Regressing of perceived healthfulness of the product on the product name, and dietary concerns showed that there existed a correlation between the three factors. These findings were also consistent with those in the first study. Further analysis showed that this correlation does not apply to both dieters and non-dieters with a high need for cognition. People with high need cognition will not perceive a product to be unhealthy because of its name and their dietary tendency. They will instead perceive a product to be either healthy or unhealthy based on evaluation of the provided product information (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). There was a similarity between high NFC dieters and high NFC non dieters, which proved that they both use systematic processing of information in the evaluation of the nutritional value of the food product (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). Participants with low need for cognition on the other hand perceived the product to be either unhealthy or healthy based on the product name and the dietary tendencies. Another interesting finding was that high NFC dieters perceived both products to be to a large extent unhealthy while low NFC showed no contrast in the perceived healthfulness of both products (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). A major conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that systematic processing of information, as opposed to the use of heuristics, stems from the high need for cognition. 6.3 The third study The third study was aimed at allowing the participants to systematically process information during product evaluation rather than relying on heuristics, such that the product name. The primary motive was to attenuate the interactive effects between product name and the perceived healthfulness. In this study, 144 participants were provided with two food items; pasta vs. salad, unlike the other previously discussed studies where the participants were asked to evaluate the healthfulness of each ingredient in the product prior to or after a general evaluation of the entire product (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). 6.3.1 Findings The bottom-up approach involved first evaluating the respective ingredients in the product name before making a general evaluation of the entire product. Based on this criterion, the findings indicated that there was an attenuated effect of product name on the perceived healthfulness of the product. This reinforces the fact that systematic processing of information will to a large extent reduce biases that arise from drawing conclusions regarding a product based on the product information. 6.4 The fourth study The fourth study introduced the concept of taste perceptions based on the perceived healthfulness of the products. 168 participants were each given a bag containing 20 Jelly Belly Assorted Gourmet Fruit Sours, which were labelled as either fruit chews or candy chews. Each bag contained five flavours. The participants were asked to read the product information prior to chewing of the gums and were then subjected to a short film where they were supposed to chew the gum and give their views regarding the taste of the products. The participants were further subjected to a manipulative check list item, which ensured that the participants read and understood the ingredients. The participants’ dietary tendency was observed through the use of the cognitive behavioural scale (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). 6.4.1 Findings Analysis of the collected data indicated that the product name and the dietary tendency affect the perceived healthfulness of the product. The perceived healthfulness will in turn affect the perceived tastiness. Food products perceived to be unhealthy were perceived to be less tasty. It is the perceived tastiness that will affect the consumption pattern (Irmak, Vallen and Robinson, 2011). 7.0 Theoretical contributions The information obtained from the conducted research studies further builds on the existing information regarding the consumption patterns of dieters and non-dieters by providing relevant insight on how people in either categories process information. The undertaken research shows that dieters will use heuristic processing of information regarding particular food products. This is mainly because dieters focus most of their attention on their eating habits and body image and will therefore look for any cues that signal the unhealthy nature of any food products. These kinds of cues will mainly include product names. Expectedly, dietary tendency have no significant effect on the perceived healthy foods. It is this reason that causes a person on a diet program to justify his or her consumption of large portions of the perceived healthy products. Non dieters, on the other hand, will not base their perceptions regarding a food product on its name. This is not because they process information systematically but rather because dietary concerns are not of interest to them. However, dieters with a high need for cognition will perceive food products to be unhealthy based on the provided information. The findings of the research also show that taste perceptions are in actual sense subjective to a person’s perception of the healthy product. Assigning a less tasty perception to a perceived unhealthy food is a strategy of ensuring the dieter keeps off the supposedly forbidden food. A dieter will even undergo taste adaptation where he conditions his mind to perceive a healthy food product in an attempt to encourage more consumption of the healthy products instead of the unhealthy products. The research paper also affirms the cognitive theory and also illustrates the importance of a consumer’s perception about a product in a whole new level. 8.0 Managerial implications In order to be able to accurately evaluate the healthfulness of the product based on its product name, unambiguous names must be provided. This is, however, not normally the case as companies will deceptively label their food products in an attempt to appeal to a particular market segment, such as the dieters. The major implication is that regulatory bodies must find a means of removing the ambiguity of product cues. This is necessary in light of the increase in lifestyle diseases, which are as a result of poor diet. As long as people always use, heuristics in the processing of information, ambiguous names may result to misconceptions and ultimately conception patterns that fail to align to the person’s intended dietary goals and objectives. This research clearly illustrates the importance of systematic processing of information as opposed to the use of heuristics. Regulatory bodies must therefore find ways of encouraging consumer to process information systematically. This calls for social marketing strategies, education programs and strategic public policies that call the consumer to rethink the basis on which he or she normally evaluates a food product. This research has another implication in that it may appeal to the dark side of marketing. Companies may resort to using misleading product names in an attempt to appeal to the people with dietary concerns. This information is of great help to the public health association of Australia. Current research shows that Australia is among the leading countries with the highest prevalence of overweight and obesity (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2012). This information can help the organization to create effective public policies that discourage sedentary lifestyle through empowering the public with the right tools to evaluate the nature and choice of food products. The right tools in this case will include factors that invoke the use of cognitive resources in the evaluation of food products as opposed to the use of heuristics. The organisation can also use extensive social marketing to erode the ambiguity in most product names, such as those of energy dense nutrients-poor food s and beverages. This will reduce the demand for unhealthy food products and reduce the reliance on the companies’ marketing strategies and advertisement that may not be in the best interest of the consumer. 9.0 Limitations of the research and new directions for future research This paper fails to take into account that most people will consume particular food products even when they perceive them to be unhealthy. This is due to various factors, such as cravings and the fact that a consumer may opt for short term pleasure and disregard the delayed and long term effects. This is in fact in line with the cognitive dissonance theory, which explains why people will practise undesirable behaviour when their beliefs and actions are in conflict (Bray, 2013). This paper also fails to take into account the aspect of reflectivity during the collection of data. This means that the prior information the researcher had prior to conducting the research may have influenced the phrasing of questionnaires thereby subconsciously influencing the response they got in an attempt to march their expectations and already held preconceptions. This journal article bases its research on the fact that consumers are rational beings. The rational behaviour of the consumer is depicted by his ability to draw a clear line between healthy and unhealthy foods. However, there are other motivational factors that may prompt a consumer to purchase particular food products besides than rationale. Furthermore, most scholars are sceptical about the rationale of the consumer behaviour (Azzurra and Paola, 2009). Future research must therefore consider the aforementioned limitations. Further research must broaden its spectrum to take into account a wide range of factors that may influence a consumer’s consumption pattern. Bibliography Azzurra, A. & Paola, P. 2009. Consumers' behaviours and attitudes toward healthy food products: The case of Organic and Functional foods. Accessed May 10, 2013 from ageconsearch.umn.edu Bray, J. 2013. Consumer Behaviour Theory: Approaches and Models Accessed May 10, 2013 from eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/.../Consumer_Behaviour_Theory_-_Appr... Irmak, C, Vallen, B. & Robinson, S. 2011. ‘The Impact of Product Name on Dieters’ and Nondieters’ Food Evaluations and Consumption.’ Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 390-405. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2012. Obesity Update. OECD. Accessed May 11, 2013 from http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oecd.org%2Fhealth%2F49716427.pdf&ei=70OPUZWMMsrAhAfQvoDYBg&usg=AFQjCNE_Kh32UYw0_gZxNnH5Ruvum6sHgQ&sig2=s6vEBnPDm2npOzaMTiISJQ&bvm=bv.46340616,d.ZG4 Read More