The Influence Exerted by Time Frames on Consumers’ Willingness to Buy Nearly Expired Food

Abstract

With the development of Internet e-commerce channels, online shopping platforms have become the main channel for consumers to buy nearly expired food. Date labels, as one of the main external clues, play a decisive role in nearly expired food purchasing. Therefore, based on attention-related theory, this study attempts to explore the influence exerted by different time frames on consumers’ willingness to buy and its mechanism. The results show that compared with the date, consumers have a higher willingness to buy nearly expired food when the expiration time is framed by delay. More specifically, compared to the date, the delay causes the individual to have a longer time perception, thus more preference for nearly expired food. Meanwhile, the mediating effect of time perception is moderated by food type. The conclusion of this research is helpful to expand the theoretical framework of time frames and related fields on nearly expired food, as well as provide practical guidance for marketers to effectively promote nearly expired food.

Exploring food waste prevention through advent food consumption: The role of perceived concern, consumer value, and impulse buying

“…They also provided sales promotions like a bulk package or "buy one get one free." These substantial price reduction and sales promotion measures based on the expiration date could greatly trigger consumers to buy impulsively, especially for people with high sensitivity to commodity prices and those with a high preference for price judgment (Song et al, 2021). The study also confirmed the positive and significant effects of utilitarian value on impulse buying, which was in line with previous studies (Zheng et al, 2019;Parsad et al, 2021).…”

“…Therefore, consumers perceive higher food safety risks for advent food since they are approaching the end of shelf-life. Furthermore, the shorter the remaining shelf-life, the higher the perceived food safety risks (Song et al, 2021). Secondly, we can see in our study that environmental concern (b = 0.017, t = 1.644) has a positive and insignificant effect on consumers' waste reduction behaviors.…”

“…The date-based pricing provides a price-quality trade-off mechanism to consumers, indicating the suboptimal features of the nearly expired food (Tsiros and Heilman, 2005;Hooge et al, 2017). Then consumers with high sensitivity to commodity price would accept the discounted price for degraded perishables and suboptimal food (Song et al, 2021), which may lead to purchase behavior and decreased food waste. Therefore, we developed the following hypothesis H1c as: H1c: Price concern is positively related to food waste reduction intention.…”

“…Prior studies on food waste mainly focused on three topics: quantification measurements (Vanham et al, 2015;Giordano et al, 2019;Flanagan and Priyadarshini, 2021;Heng and House, 2022); effects of food waste on environment and resources usage; and motivations and policies encouraging food waste reduction behaviors (Diaz-Ruiz et al, 2018;Song et al, 2021). As for advent food, studies focused more on pricing (Aschemann-Witzel, 2018;Giordano et al, 2019;Song et al, 2021), promotion (Aschemann-Witzel, 2018Jaeger et al, 2018), date label (Samotyja and Sielicka-Rózyńska, 2021), and consumer personal characteristics (Hooge et al, 2017). However, these studies are conducted mainly in off-line circumstances and have fewer considerations of consumer psychologies and values toward advent food and online shopping.…”

Influence of “best before” dates on expected and actual food liking

“…Date marking can contribute to consumer apprehension of a given food's fitness for consumption (Gong et al, 2022;Connors and Schuelke, 2022). Understanding and interpreting dates impact consumer behaviour, which, in turn, affects consumer purchase and consumption decisions (Tian et al, 2022;Song et al, 2021;Hartmann et al, 2021;Shamim et al, 2021;Kavanaugh and Quinlan, 2020;Thompson et al, 2018;Newsome et al, 2014).…”