Misleading Marketing Communication: Assessing the Impact of Potentially Deceptive Food Labelling on Consumer Behaviour

170 Pages·2022·3.635 MB·English

by  Viktor Smith, Daniel Barratt, Peter Møgelvang-Hansen, Alexander U. Wedel Andersen

Misleading Marketing
Communication
Assessing the Impact of
Potentially Deceptive Food
Labelling on Consumer
Behaviour
Viktor Smith · Daniel Barratt
Peter Møgelvang-Hansen
Alexander U. Wedel Andersen
Misleading Marketing Communication
Viktor Smith • Daniel Barratt
Peter Møgelvang-Hansen
Alexander U. Wedel Andersen
Misleading Marketing
Communication
Assessing the Impact of Potentially Deceptive Food
Labelling on Consumer Behaviour
Viktor Smith Daniel Barratt
Department of Management, Society, Department of Management, Society,
and Communication and Communication
Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen Business School
Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark
Peter Møgelvang-Hansen Alexander U. Wedel Andersen
CBS Law Woba.io
Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen, Denmark
Copenhagen, Denmark
ISBN 978-3-031-11205-8 ISBN 978-3-031-11206-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11206-5
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
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P
reface
This small book is written in the spirit of the Palgrave Pivot series which
encourages the publication of original research at its natural length, “lon-
ger than a journal article, but shorter than a monograph”.
Food labelling and its effect on consumer behaviour is a highly versatile
topic which is being investigated by a substantial number of disciplines
that span from law and politics, through food development, human nutri-
tion and health, and sustainability studies, to marketing and branding,
with contributions from both the social, the behavioural, and the natural
sciences, and from the humanities. As a result, vital research questions and
findings that evidently supplement each other tend to remain scattered
across different theoretical paradigms, real-life concerns, and publication
channels with few natural touchpoints.
Our intention with this work was to bridge some of these gaps by
addressing a topic which connects to several, ultimately to all, of the per-
spectives just mentioned by its very nature: the question whether and how
the legal comprehension of potentially misleading food labelling could be
transposed into empirically measurable terms, thereby offering new leads
to the development of fair food marketing and labelling practices also
beyond strictly legal demands. This goal is pursued in four experimental
studies which complement each other on essential points. To keep the task
empirically manageable, the point of reference throughout is EU law and
selected grey-zone scenarios found on the Danish food market. However,
the present format allows us to further contextualize these empirical spe-
cifics to a range of issues of wider methodological, theoretical, and societal
interest.
v
vi PREFACE
Still, we cannot possibly cover all current perspectives on the topic in a
concise work like the present. That includes, for instance, the detailed
legal treatment of unfair commercial practices beyond EU and further
implications for private–public collaboration in such fields as health pro-
motion and support of local food production. However, we hope to have
provided some new leads for continued work in these and other relevant
directions in future research.
Copenhagen, Denmark Viktor Smith
Daniel Barratt
Peter Møgelvang-Hansen
Alexander Uzerovic Wedel Andersen
a
cknowledgements
The authors are indebted to a considerable number of colleagues and col-
laborators for their intellectual and practical support as the work pro-
gressed, no one mentioned, no one forgotten. We owe a special thanks to
Iben Humble Kristensen, VIFOSS, Anne Nymand-Grarup, Varefakta, and
Lars Aaarup, Coop Consumers Insights & Analytics, Denmark, for shar-
ing essential insights on specific market conditions and regulatory issues.
We are likewise grateful to Alexander Dahl, Mai Hviid Madsen, Marie
Nytoft, Christian Poulsen, Philip Alexander Hedlund Smith, and Francoise
Qvistgaard for their vital contributions to the empirical work. On the edi-
torial side, we thank Editor-in-Chief Liz Barlow and two anonymous peer
reviewers for gently helping us in giving the final touches to the manu-
script, and to Ramabrabha Selvarai, Arun Prasath, and Vipinkumar Mani
for keeping the publishing process on track. The book incorporates and
expands on results and insights gained in previous work co-funded by the
Danish Council for Strategic Research and by the Independent Research
Fund Denmark.
vii
c
ontents
Part I B ackground 1
1 Setting the Scene 3
References 7
2 The Legal Conception of Misleading Product Labelling
and its Operationalization 11
2.1 The Prohibition against Unfair Commercial Practices and
Misleading Labelling in EU Law 11
2.2 Operationalizing the Legal Criteria 16
References 21
3 Measuring Misleadingness: The Preference- Conscious
Choice Modelled and Observed 25
3.1 Aims and Scope 25
3.2 The ShopTrip Set-up: First Overview 27
3.2.1 Ecological Validity versus Experimental Control 27
3.2.2 Simulated e-Shopping 28
3.2.3 Adding and Assessing Preference Consciousness 29
References 31
ix
x CONTENTS
Part II S tudies 33
4 Study 1: Low-Fat Claims on Real-Market Products 35
4.1 Fairness Challenges and Target PMEs 35
4.2 Test Design 37
4.2.1 Target Products 38
4.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 40
4.2.3 Participants 41
4.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 41
4.3 Results and Discussion 43
References 51
5 Study 2: Low-fat Claims on Fictitious Products 53
5.1 Fairness Challenges and Target PMEs 53
5.2 Test Design 54
5.2.1 Target Products 54
5.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 55
5.2.3 Participants 55
5.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 56
5.3 Results and Discussion 57
6 Study 3: What’s behind the Keyhole 63
6.1 Fairness Challenges and (Accidental?) PMEs 63
6.2 Test Design and Procedure 65
6.2.1 Target Products 66
6.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 69
6.2.3 Participants 69
6.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 69
6.3 Results and Discussion 70
References 78
7 Study 4: “Local” by Facts or by Atmosphere? 79
7.1 Fairness Challenges and PMEs 80
7.2 Test Design and Procedure 82
7.2.1 Target Products 83
7.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 86
CONTENTS xi
7.2.3 Participants 86
7.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 86
7.3 Results and Discussion 87
References 96
Part III General Discussion 99
8 Why Do Consumers Get it Wrong? 101
8.1 Allowing for the Human Factor 101
8.2 The Need for Semantic and Pragmatic Co-creation 102
8.3 System 1 versus System 2 108
8.4 A Quest for Situational Relevance 111
8.5 What We See is All There Is: The X-factor of Visual
Attention 115
References 117
9 Implications for Fair Labelling Practices: How to Get it
Right? 121
9.1 Contributing to a Wider Debate 121
9.2 Commercial Claims 122
9.3 Non-Commercial Regulated Labels 126
References 130
10 Concluding Remarks 133
References 138
Appendix 1: Example of standard ShopTrip setup 141
Appendix 2: ShopTrip setup in version adopted for
eyetracking (Study 4) 145
References 147
Index 161