Sugar in disguise or healthy indulgence: A cross-cultural comparision of the perceptions of dietary vice/virtue bundles

• Authors: Napatsorn Jiraporn , Alisara Rungnontarat Charinsarn , Michael Sheridan
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Consumers often choose virtue food to attain health goals and vice food to achieve indulgence goals. However, food and beverage companies have begun to nullify the vice and virtue categories by bundling vice and virtue ingredients into a single item (e.g. Yogurt with Oreo topping). This research contrasts how consumers from Asian and Western cultures evaluate such vice/virtue food bundles. Building on the perceptual processes and regulatory focus literatures, two cross-cultural experiments using participants in Thailand and the U.S. shows that Westerners prefer virtue-heavy bundles to vice-heavy bundles while Asians show similar preference across both types of bundle. Process measures revealed that Asians perceive greater fit between vice and virtue components in the bundles than Westerners and this perceived fit mediates the effect of culture on their food choice. Study 2 reveals the boundary condition. Specifically, when regulatory focus was manipulated, the effect of culture is no longer significant. The findings provide managerial implications for food and beverage companies as well as contributions to consumer behavior literature.

Keywords

EN

food consumption; guilt; hedonic consumption; goal conflict; product bundles

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Management & Marketing
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 410-430

Dates

published

2016-07-01

online

2016-08-10

Contributors

author

Napatsorn Jiraporn

• State University of New York at Oswego, New York, United States

author

Alisara Rungnontarat Charinsarn

• Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand

author

Michael Sheridan

• State University of New York at New Paltz, New York, United States

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/mmcks-2016-0006