Country-wise differences in perception of health-related messages in cereal-based food products

The objective of the present study was to explore the impact of health-related messages on the perceived overall healthiness and consumers' likelihood to buy cereal-based products or non-cereal products containing beneficial compounds from grains, across four European countries. The data were collected from a sample of 2392 members of the public in Finland, Germany, Italy and the UK. The results from a conjoint task with a main effects additive model were reported. In general, the presence of a verbal health claim on foods had positive influence on respondents perception of healthiness and on likelihood to buy the products, whereas the pictorial health claims were found to have a weak influence on the two dependent variables. However, the findings showed that health-related information on food labels differently influenced the healthiness perception and the likelihood to buy the product across the four countries, suggesting that different cultures, traditions, and eating habits have to be taken into account before positioning cereal-based products containing beneficial compounds from grains on the market. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The impact of personal resources and their goal relevance on satisfaction with food-related life among the elderly.

The study explored how actual resources, perceived levels of different types of resources and goal relevance of these resources affect older people's satisfaction with food-related life using a survey in eight European countries, where 3291 participants above 65 years of age and living in their own homes took part. Satisfaction with food-related life was measured using Satisfaction With Food-related Life (SWFL) scale developed by Grunert, Raats, Dean, Nielsen, Lumbers and The Food in Later Life Team. [(2007). A measure of satisfaction with food-related life. Appetite, 49, 486–493]. Results showed that older people rated the resources that they believed to have plentiful of as being highly relevant to achieve their goals. The individuals who rated the relevance and their level of different resources as high were also more satisfied with their food-related quality of life. Further, satisfaction with food-related life, as was expected, was predicted by income, health measures and living circumstances. However, the study also showed that perceived levels of other resources such as support of family and friends, food knowledge, storage facilities also added to the individuals’ satisfaction with food-related life. In addition, the congruence between perceived level and relevance of a resource was also shown to add to people's satisfaction with food-related life, implying that older people's satisfaction with food-related life depends not only on the level of resources they think they have but also on their goals and how important they think these resources are to achieving their goals.

Predicting intentions to purchase organic food: The role of affective and moral attitudes in the Theory of Planned Behaviour

This study examined the usefulness of integrating measures of affective and moral attitudes into the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)-model in predicting purchase intentions or organic foods. Moral attitude was operationalised Lis positive self-rewarding feelings of doing the right thing. Questionnaire data were gathered in three countries: Italy (N = 202), Finland (N = 270) and UK (N = 200) in March 2004. Questions focussed on intentions to purchase organic apples and organic ready-to-cook pizza instead of their conventional alternatives. Data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling by simultaneous multi-group analysis of the three Countries. Along with attitudes, moral attitude and subjective norms explained considerable shares of variances in intentions. The relative influences of these variables varied between the Countries, such that in the UK and Italy moral attitude rather than subjective norms had stronger explanatory power. In Finland it was other way around. Inclusion of moral attitude improved the model fit and predictive ability of the model, although only marginally in Finland. Thus the results partially Support the usefulness of incorporating moral measures as well as affective items for attitude into the framework of TPB. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.