Confusion or credibility: consumers understanding of health and nutrition claims

S. Thomas
Campden BRI
UK

When designing labels for food and drink products it is important to understand how consumers perceive the information presented and whether the information provided is judged as credible and useful to consumers prior to purchase.  Recently, due to changes in legislation governing the use of vocabulary relating to health and nutrition claims, there has been a surge in the release of products with either health and/or nutrition claims on them.  As a consequence consumers have been presented with a plethora of information, such as, names of functional ingredients and scientific explanations of how the body utilises nutrients to deliver specific health benefits.

This study set out to understand the consumers’ perspective on health and nutrition claims. The qualitative fieldwork explored consumers’ familiarity, understanding and believability of various health and nutrition claims, together with related vocabulary and images found on product packaging. In total, six in-depth focus groups of 2hours 30minutes in length, involving interactive activities and products with risk reduction and function claims.  Inductive analysis of the data has elicited similarities and differences between the life-stage groups of pre-kids, family and empty nesters and also between participants’ level of interest in health.

The results of this study show that participants from all life-stages are aware of and see the relevance of nutritional information on food labels, although there are subtleties in the prioritisation between the life-stage groups.  In contrast, differences in levels of understanding and perceived credibility were found between the life-stage groups in relation to functional ingredients and health claims. The perceived credibility of a health claim was strongly related to the perceived compatibility between a functional ingredient and the base carrier, as well as trust in the brand. However, the use of functional ingredients and their compatibility were also causes of confusion and concern across the all groups.