The Value of the Term ‘Organic’ in Messagingas a Driver of Product Acceptance in Older vs. Younger Consumers - Part II

Consumer knowledge and the ‘driving factors’

Not all adult consumers are equallyinformed about functional foods or sensitive to the specific linkages of nutrition and health. Larue et al (2004) reported that many consumers will avoid GM foods, regardlessof the presence of functional health properties. Lack of awareness of the concept of functional foods and their benefits is a barrier to their wide adoption (Armstrong et al, 2005; Gracia and De Magistris, 2008).Armstrong, Farley, Gray and Durkin (2005) state that there is indeeda growth potential for this industry. However, in order to expand the health-enhancing foods market, the industry needs to establish an actionable consumer segmentation and relevant product positioning for the different segments.

Marketing communications regarding functional foods have a strong message to convey both in providing information and for positioning products. Such communication must lay a larger, more central role to overcome two shortcomings regarding information about functional foods. The first shortcoming is that technical information regarding functional foods has been given without thoughtabout what people want to know or what people actually do (Griffiths, 2002). The second is that providing unduly detailed information generates the risk of information overload, which results in consumer indifferenceor loss of confidence regarding their choice of foods. To overcome these, the communication componentshould be responsive to the consumer perspective. This requires precise and strategically crafted communicationsthat signal

the functionality of a food while support the benefits.

The ‘appropriate messaging’ can vary. Previous studies have examined the relative importance of different messaging factors (Bruhn, 2008; Cardello et al, 2007; Leathwood et al, 2007) and found that the most important factor affecting consumption was the perceived riskassociated with the technology of processing foods. Larson and Grunert (2003) reported that the use of different processing methodsis an important determinant of consumers' perceptions of the healthiness of functional foods. There appears to be widespread perception amongst consumers that more natural methods result in foods of higher nutritional quality. Gracia and De Magistris (2008) claim that information on organic foods is crucial to expanding consumer demand and consumption. This divergence of results means thatif consumer perceptions regarding the health benefits of organic foods are to be supported, then more knowledge and organizing principles are needed to augment that which is currently available (Williams, 2002; Gracia and De Magistris, 2008).

The Contribution of this study

Following recent studies (Armstrong et al, 2005; Griffiths, 2002; Taylor& Smith, 2004)that call for examining the segmentation and positioning of functional food products as an important subset of foods as a whole, we segment mindsets regarding functional foods in terms of the nature of the messaging that they permit.

This study makes three specific contributions.

First, the analysis responds to calls ofrecently publicized reports to segment communication messages. We compare the data from two groups (individuals age 60+ ersus individuals age 20-30)concerning features of foodsand beverages– responses from what was in the food to emotional responses, to specifichealth-and-wellness features.

Second, it expands the existing knowledge on organic functional foods, examining the effect of the term '100% organic' as a messaging for quality of functional foods.

Third, the approach creates a new method for studying the mind of the consumer who considers foods. When researchers investigate foods, either they investigate onefood in depth or many foods superficially, asking 1-2 questions about each. This current study comes from a different intellectual heritage, which looksboth in depth and broadly.

The study uses experimental design of ideas, or conjoint analysis, executed with many different products, in a systematized manner that allows for across-food and

within-food comparison of ideas. The underlyingrationale is that by creating a bank of elements or pieces of knowledge about a single product, by varying these elements in a systematic way, and getting responses to combinations, the researcher learns how each of the elements drives the response. In a conjoint study, it is not unusual to work with 20-50 elements across categories of foods. For each category, we mix and match elements to make hundreds of test concepts, test these concepts  among consumers, and identify what specific elements drive the responses. By working with mixtures of communication messages rather than single elements, the esearcher forces the respondent to integrate the information from different sources, and trade off the different messages. It is almost impossible in a conjoint analysis of this type for responses to be politically correct, because the elements are not treated one-at-a time. The mixture strategy prevents the respondent from adopting a implistic, politically correct, biased strategy to answering.

Propositions of this study

The first proposition examines the measure of latent interest of old adults versus young adults in functional foods by the distribution itself as well as by the ‘additive constant’ statistic across foods. The second proposition examines the performance of a specific common term '100% organic' as a persuader of consumption across foods and ages. This paper focuses on three specificanalyses using this database:

1. Age distribution of respondents of differentages as a measure of latent interest in ‘good for you’ foods.
2. The additive constant across 21 foods and across ages as a measure of interest in the food itself when positioned as ‘good for you’.
3. Performance of the term 'organic', a commonly used descriptor to denote quality and ‘good for you’ across foods and ages