title: Does the Valuation of Nutritional Claims Differ among Consumers? Insights from Spain.
abstract: The presence in the market of food products with nutritional claims is increasing. The objective of this paper is to assess consumers' valuation of some nutritional claims ('high in fiber' and 'reduced saturated fat') in a European country and to test for differences among consumers. An artefactual non-hypothetical experiment was carried out in a realistic setting (mock/real brick-and-mortar supermarket) with a sample of 121 Spanish consumers stratified by gender, age, and body mass index. A latent class model was specified and estimated with the data from the experiment. Results indicate that consumers positively valued both nutritional claims, but the valuation was heterogeneous, and three consumer segments were detected. Two of them positively valued both nutritional claims (named 'nutritional claim seekers'), while the third segment's valuation was negative (named 'nutritional claim avoiders'). This last segment is characterized by being younger males with university studies who give the least importance to health, natural ingredients, and the calorie/sugar/fat content when shopping. They pay less attention to nutritional information, and they stated that they use this information to a lesser extent. These consumers showed the least interest in healthy eating, and they reported that they do not have health problems related to their diet.
authors.affiliation: Unidad de Economía Agroalimentaria, Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón (CITA), Gobierno de Aragón, Avda. Montañana, 930, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain. fjurado@aragon.es.|Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón-IA2 (CITA-Universidad de Zaragoza), 50059 Zaragoza, Spain. fjurado@aragon.es.
authors.forename: Francesc
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jurado
authors.affiliation: Unidad de Economía Agroalimentaria, Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón (CITA), Gobierno de Aragón, Avda. Montañana, 930, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain. agracia@aragon.es.|Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón-IA2 (CITA-Universidad de Zaragoza), 50059 Zaragoza, Spain. agracia@aragon.es.
authors.forename: Azucena
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gracia
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D005260:Female; D005515:Food Labeling; D005518:Food Preferences / Q000523:psychology*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009753:Nutritive Value; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013649:Taste; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: choice experiment; heterogeneous preferences; nutritional claims