Consumers' Trade-Off between Nutrition and Health Claims under Regulation 1924/2006: Insights from a Choice Experiment Analysis.
The aim of this paper is to investigate consumers' preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for functional mozzarella cheese whose health benefits (reduced fat and enrichment in omega-3) are communicated by using nutrition claims (article 8) and health claims (articles 13 and 14) of the EU Regulation 1924/2006. In order to achieve the stated objective a choice survey was developed and administered to a sample of Italian respondents. The product attributes and attribute levels included in the choice experiment were obtained from in-depth interviews conducted with stakeholders working on the development of this new product in the Italian region of Puglia. Results show that many participants were not aware of functional food. Marketing segmentation performed via latent class analysis indicates that the development of this hypothetical product should be based on the addition of naturally enriched omega-3. In terms of health communication under Regulation 1924/2006, heterogeneity of preferences of the nine identified segments reveals that respondents have a clear preference for products from the Puglia region, for the combined nutrition claim over single nutrition claims and for the reduction of disease health claim (article 14) over the health claim (article 13). In monetary terms, willingness to pay for health claims is higher than nutrition claims.
['Viscecchia|Rosaria|R|0000-0002-2977-3811', 'Nocella|Giuseppe|G|0000-0001-9625-6315', 'De Devitiis|Biagia|B|0000-0002-1816-5028', 'Bimbo|Francesco|F|', 'Carlucci|Domenico|D|', 'Seccia|Antonio|A|0000-0003-4549-6479', 'Nardone|Gianluca|G|']
D000328:Adult D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases D002611:Cheese D002755:Choice Behavior D003258:Consumer Behavior D003625:Data Collection D005260:Female D005515:Food Labeling D005518:Food Preferences D006801:Humans D007881:Legislation, Food D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D017059:Models, Econometric D009753:Nutritive Value D012307:Risk Factors
health claim WTP nutrition claim functional food segmentation