Context
Today, consumers show more and more concern for a healthy way of eating, which encompasses a myriad of meanings: from fat/gluten/sugar-free to organic/sustainable food. The food industry tries to adapt to this trend by proposing healthy alternatives to existing products, which explains why diet sodas or fat-free cheese seem to flourish everywhere. The idea is to respond to consumer expectations of healthy food, but stick to the products they enjoy: consumers should not be deprived of their favorite products because they wish to eat healthy. As advertised by Coca Cola, Zero Coke is supposed to taste similar to regular Coke, but without the calories. However, since all habits die hard, consumers are sometimes particularly demanding towards the healthy alternatives provided by the food industry, arguing they lack the tastiness of their standard counterparts.
Research questions
Healthy versions of standard products are made to fulfil two consumer needs: better eating and keeping their habits with the products they already enjoy. However, consumers do not always give these novel healthy alternatives the warm welcome expected by marketers. Florack, Koch, Haasova, Kunz and Alves explain this phenomenon in an article published in 2021 in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. Their intuition resides in:
– the differentiation principle, which explains that consumer evaluation is built on the attributes that differentiate the novel product from existing ones,
– the pioneering advantage that states that the first product to enter the market has a lasting advantage over its competitors.
Therefore, the article helps answer the following questions:
– Do consumers perceive the attributes of standard products and their healthy alternatives differently?
– Does the differentiation principle apply to the evaluation of novel food products in comparison of their standard counterparts?
– Is there a pioneering advantage of standard products over their healthy counterparts?
Method
This research consists of six studies in which consumers were asked to evaluate a standard meal and its healthy alternative. Across studies, the authors tested for different types of food (burgers, foreign dishes). Moreover, since “healthy” may refer to different meanings, the authors tested for different framings of the healthy alternative (low-calories or sustainable for instance). In a more original way, the authors also used different formulations of the attributes of the products: sometimes the attributes were formulated with the exact same words, sometimes, synonyms were used. Informants were recruited using a marketing research panel, so that they were representative of the population, and were compensated for their participation.
Results
– When consumers were asked to describe a standard meal and its healthier alternative, positive attributes were more often applied to both products whereas negative attributes were more often applied to one product only. In other words, perceived positive attributes are more likely to overlap between the standard meal and its healthier alternative, whereas perceived negative attributes tend to be distinct from one product to the other.
– When consumers were presented with different descriptions of a standard meal and its healthier alternative featuring positive and negative attributes, they usually expected the standard meal to be tastier than its healthy counterpart, which translated into higher purchase intent. However, these results do not remain true across framings of the healthy alternative. For instance, when the healthy alternative was presented as calorie-reduced, expected tastiness and purchase intent of the standard product were higher than those of the healthy alternative, whereas when the healthy alternative was presented as sustainable and tastier, expected tastiness and purchase intent were equal between products. These results advocate for the possibility for the healthy alternative to overcome the pioneering effect of the standard product, when it is presented as tastier, with a better consumption experience.
– When positive attributes overlapped in both descriptions (of the standard product and its healthy counterpart), expected tastiness and purchase intent of the healthier meal were worse than when negative attributes overlapped. However, the expectations did not vary for the standard meal. To sum up, an overlap in positive attributes between the standard and the novel meal triggers weaker expected tastiness and purchase intent for the novel meal than an overlap in negative attributes. In other words, the negative (resp. positive) attributes of a novel product weigh more than those of a standard product when their positive (resp. negative) attributes overlap. Unfortunately the overlap effect holds whether the positive attributes are formulated with the exact same wording or if synonyms are used.
– To sum up, these results show how the differentiation effect applies to food products. When comparing two products that were introduced at different points in time (i.e the standard product and its novel healthier alternative), consumers focus on the differences between the products rather than their similarities to evaluate them. Unfortunately perceived positive attributes tend to overlap while perceived negative attributes tend to differ, which explains why consumers’ valuations of new food products can be poorer than expected because they suffer by comparison from their standard counterparts.
– When both products are presented on the same leaflet, the order of presentation has in impact on consumer valuation of the products. When the classic meal is presented on the left (and the novel meal is presented on the right), the overlap effect works. However, when the novel meal is presented on the left (and the classic meal is presented on the right), there is no overlap effect.
Why is this article relevant for researchers?
This article provides concrete keys to understand how consumers welcome new food products in comparison with existing ones. It explains how the pioneering advantage and the differentiation effect play a role in the valuation of a novel product by comparison with its standard counterpart. It specifically deals with the case of healthy vs standard food products. Since the article focuses on two meanings of “healthy” (low calories and sustainable food), future research could test this effect on other framings such as gluten-free, organic, vegan, etc. Moreover, this phenomenon could occur in other introductions of novel alternatives of standard products or brands. For instance, the authors suggest the same effect could be at stake for the comparison between national and store brands.
Why is this article relevant for professionals?
This research helps professionals understand how consumers may react to the introduction of novel alternatives to existing products. Existing products may benefit from a pioneering advantage that could be damaging for the novel product (but this effect does not hold across framings). Moreover, consumers tend to evaluate negatively the attributes that differentiate the novel product from its standard counterpart, and differentiating attributes weigh more in than overlapping attributes in the evaluation process. For these reasons, consumers may not be as welcoming as expected towards the new product.
Fortunately, the authors provide ways to overcome the pioneering advantage and the differentiation effects. First, emphasis should be laid on the improvements in consumer experience enabled by the novel product, therefore reducing the pioneering advantage of the standard product. For instance, Pepsi’s diet alternative was named PepsiMax, a name that does not emphasize the “healthy” aspect of the product. In its 2020 campaign, “zero sugar” is depicted as one of the many attributes of the product, whereas tastiness is featured as the product’s selling point.
Second, in any communication featuring the novel and the standard products, the novel product should be introduced first, thus decreasing the differentiation effect. In this Instagram post, original Philadephia cheese is presented on the right, while newer alternatives (carrot and strawberry flavors) are on the left.