Importance of Health Claims in the Adoption of New Breakfast Cereal Products in the UK

Abstract

Regular breakfast consumption has the potential to prevent the prevalence of NCDs and to improve the nutritional profile of diets. Given consumers’ interest in improving their diets, food suppliers are interested in introducing new cereal products making different health claims to capture consumers’ attention. The purpose of this study is threefold: first, it aims to understand whether UK food suppliers are working to increase the availability of breakfast cereals with healthy and nutritious attributes; second, it explores which companies are leading the launch of these products; and third, it assesses to what extent health and nutrition claims made by breakfast cereals have an impact on their market success. The study employs an assembled database combining data from Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD) and Kantar Worldpanel Dataset (KWDS) for the UK. A hazard-based duration model was used to analyse the success of the new products launched in the UK market in 2011 following them up to 2015. Our results reveal that UK suppliers broadened the number of breakfast cereals on offer in the period 2000 to 2018, with a particular focus on multigrain cereals, porridge and granola. Health and nutrition claims were added to 27% of these products. Although consumers welcome healthy alternatives such as muesli, the impact of positional claims on the success of newly developed breakfast cereals is claim-specific. No clear pattern regarding the impact of health and nutrition claims is identified. However, other elements such as celiac-friendly ingredients and UK origin do have a positive impact on the success of breakfast cereals.

Nutrition Claims Frequency and Compliance in a Food Sample of the Spanish Market: The BADALI Study

“…Regarding nutrients, micronutrients, fat, fibre and sugars were the most frequently claimed in the present analysis, which is in agreement with previous studies [ 29 , 33 , 34 , 39 , 40 ].…”

Consumers’ Attitudes and Purchase Intention for a Vitamin-Enriched Extra Virgin Olive Oil

“…Ballco et al [78] examined the willingness to pay for extra virgin olive oil, finding that price is the most influential extrinsic attribute in the purchase decision [79][80][81] followed by the origin and the Protected Designation Origin (PDO) certification [82,83]. Among the extrinsic attributes, it is worth noting the role that food labels play, particularly nutritional ones, in directing consumers towards healthy food choices [84][85][86]. Our findings confirm that food acceptance is influenced by the information on the label about the origin of the product, quality, composition and the production process [72], so, the food label influences the perception of the taste and quality of a product, and hence the intention to purchase it.…”

The Role of Individual Knowledge in Functional Olive Oil Preferences: Does Self-Coherence Lead to Different Health Attributes Perception?

“…Nevertheless, in traditional olive oil production countries such as Spain, consumers’ preferences for olive oil depend more on food traditions than on healthy food choices [ 23 ]. In addition, personal traits influence consumers’ utilities; for example, it seems that dietary traditions and food-related activities (such as cooking) are more important than healthy food beliefs for Spanish consumers, and particularly for males [ 24 ].…”

“…The existing literature addressed the cognitive processes correlated with the effects of food labels and the role of nutritional labels in driving consumers’ healthy food choices [ 24 , 25 ]. Although information about the nutritional content of food has a strong influence on consumers’ choices of healthier food products [ 26 ], in many cases, the nutrition information provided on such labels is underutilized by consumers due to their limited amount of objective knowledge [ 4 , 19 , 25 ].…”