Pleasure versus Healthiness in Multi-Ingredient Sustainable Foods: How Centrality Influences Performance: An Abstract

This study is particularly relevant in understating consumer’s evaluation of multi-ingredient sustainable food products. Firms are in a constant need to introduce sustainable products; thus, the authors consider product type (vice/virtue) implications on the perceived performance of the product. In examining this relationship, they draw from compensatory inference and attribute centrality (the degree to which the ingredients are integral in defining the food product) theories. Compensatory assumptions in food and beverages segment identify a product to be healthy and good for consumers in long term or can be a source of immediate fun and excitement but not both (Kivetz and Simonson 2002). Therefore, a wholesomeness claim might lead consumers to suspect reduced enjoyment and pleasure in a vice product category (Raghunathan et al. 2006) such that consumers might recognize the product to be less superior in vice rather than in virtue category. This proposition is also supported by an empirical confirmation, which shows that consumers are less reactive to the advertisement (Bezawada and Pauwels 2013) and willingness to pay for organic products in the vice category (Van Droon and Verhoef 2011). Thus, findings of the study 1 show that the consumers perceive a sustainable product to be superior in case of virtue product category (e.g., Yogurt) and inferior in case of the vice product category (e.g., Chocolate).

In study 2, the authors show that the perceived performance inferiority of product can be avoided by linking sustainability to peripheral rather than central ingredients of the food product. The presented studies support the hypotheses and explore the effect of ingredient centrality on product type-perceived performance relationship in sustainable foods. The authors conclude the paper with both managerial and theoretical implications. It helps the firms to mediate the efforts of sustainability effectively.