مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد افزایش قصد خرید برای محصولات نه چندان مطلوب – الزویر ۲۰۲۴

Abstract

To reduce food waste, motivating consumers to purchase suboptimal (imperfect) products seems a promising strategy. Yet, two recent literature reviews show that it is challenging to motivate consumers to purchase suboptimal products. Moreover, the effects of the most promising marketing strategies thus far – pricing and communication strategies − have hardly been directly compared. Our research addresses these issues by 1) presenting two novel strategies that can increase purchase intentions for suboptimal products, and 2) comparing the effects of pricing strategies, communication strategies, and the two novel strategies. In a survey and an experiment, consumer responses to pricing (discounts or multi-item promotions), communication (concerning products’ naturalness or sustainability), and experience strategies (providing tasting or a show) were compared, revealing varying effects on product perceptions and purchase intentions. Consumers’ value orientations influenced consumer responses to marketing strategies. These findings provide valuable suggestions for future research on minimizing suboptimal food waste.

Introduction

Humans’ use of natural resources exceeds the planet’s possibilities (UN, 2022). Especially food production requires extensive use of natural resources, and is responsible for about one third of all greenhouse gas emissions (Garnett, 2011). Yet, one third to one half of the produced food is wasted (FAO, 2019). The reduction of food waste, defined as “…any food, and inedible parts of food, removed from the food supply chain to be recovered or disposed” (FUSIONS, 2014, p. 6), is therefore one of the necessary actions for a more sustainable future (UN, 2022).

One prominent preventable source of food waste is the waste of suboptimal products. Suboptimal products, also called abnormally-shaped (Pfeiffer, Sundar, & Deval, 2021), imperfect (De Hooge, 2022), or ugly products (Hartmann, Jahnke, & Hamm, 2021), deviate on the basis of appearance, date-labelling, or packaging. When focusing on appearance deviations only (e.g. bent cucumbers), suboptimal products are products that diverge from perfect products solely on aesthetics such as weight, size, or shape (De Hooge et al., 2017, De Hooge, 2022). The deviation concerns extrinsic product cues, making suboptimal products equal to optimal products on intrinsic product quality and safety (De Hooge et al., 2017). Such products have difficulties moving through the supply chain, and consumers appear unwilling to purchase them (Hartmann et al., 2021, Varese et al., 2022). Consequently, retailers are unmotivated to sell suboptimal products (De Hooge, Van Dulm, & Van Trijp, 2018). Motivating consumers to purchase suboptimal products is therefore essential.

General discussion

The present findings provide useful additions to the research on suboptimal food waste reduction strategies. When deciding which strategy to apply, comparisons between different strategies is useful, especially when strategies affect multiple responses simultaneously. For instance, we reveal that pricing strategies are most promising to increase purchase intentions for suboptimal products, but they reduce the perceived value of products in general (Grewal, Krishnan, Baker, & Borin, 1998), and have no positive effect consumers’ suboptimal product perceptions. Consequently, such strategies may transfer food waste from supply chains to consumer households, as consumers may be less tempted to consume ‘lower-valued’ suboptimal products (although Giordano, Alboni, Cicatiello, and Falasconi (2019) did not find an effect of discounts on household food waste). Naturalness and show strategies instead increase both purchase intentions and product perceptions. This may positively affect suboptimal product consumption. Indeed, some studies have found naturalness (authenticity) communication to increase consumers’ consumption intentions (De Hooge et al., 2022, Van Giesen and De Hooge, 2019). Thus, comparing different marketing strategies on multiple relevant responses is valuable for future research.