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Meat production systems have to become more sustainable to ensure their social license to operate. While the discussion on the meat sector’s social license to operate revolves around sustainability and ethicality of meat production, less is known about consumers’ ethical orientation in relation to meat consumption. To this end, we incorporate a measurement scale for consumers’ ethical orientation in a latent class choice segmentation with 3028 European consumers to understand their preferences regarding responsible meat production and the role of ethicality as well as environmental concern. The results show that the segment with high meat consumption prefers lower prices and a smaller share of less-price sensitive, environmentally concerned consumers prefer the meat of animals that had outdoor access. A higher ethical orientation is associated with purchasing welfare meat. We conclude that ethicality appeals could have potential in reaching consumers of welfare meat.

The Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionnaire (CFPQ) has been evaluated in international studies, but the evaluation of its psychometric properties in Spanish, and in particular for parents of adolescents is still limited, and the invariance of measurement according to gender has not been evaluated. Therefore, the objectives of this study were: (1) To adapt the five-factor model of the CFPQ instrument to Spanish; (2) To examine the psychometric properties of this adaptation; and (3) To evaluate the measurement invariance of the model to verify the equivalence of measurement of the perceptions of food parenting practices between mothers and fathers belonging to nuclear, dual-earner families with adolescent children. Participants were 946 mothers and fathers from Southern Chile. Results showed that the conceptual equivalence for the CFPQ was achieved. An exploratory factor analysis was performed for a five-factor model: Monitoring, Child control, Restriction for weight control, Modeling and Environment. Horn’s parallel analysis identified four factors, while factor loading analysis determined the removal of the environment factor. Confirmatory factor analysis presented good reliability values. Convergent and discriminant validity was confirmed, and medium-to-high levels of goodness of fit were obtained, eliminating two items. Results supported a final model of four factors and 19 items. Multigroup analysis of the measurement model verified the configural and metric invariance between fathers and mothers, while the scalar and strict partial invariance was verified. These findings are a relevant guide to measure factorial scores in the four-factor model of the CFPQ, establishing a characterization of feeding practices of parents and adolescents.

Information about food is available from several sources using a variety of communication channels. Following an overview of the different types on food information, the most important source/channel combinations are discussed. The key steps in processing the information toward making a food choice are discussed: consumer's exposure to such information, the attention the consumer pays to it, the understanding and/or liking of the information, as well as the importance of motivation, knowledge, and trust. To support consumers in making informed food choices, it is recommended to ensure that food information is easy to understand and targeted to consumers with a specific need or interest, align the information on the food label with the communication about the food elsewhere (“off label”), provide (non-expert) influencers with transparent information to enable an increase in the trustworthiness of their communications on the web in on social media. Furthermore, increase cooperation between authorities and food producers to create standards that fulfill the legal requirements and are feasible as label elements. Improving food literacy among consumers by including it in formal education would provide consumers with better nutrition knowledge and skills to interpret food-related information in a manner that supports informed choices.

Smartphone apps can create value for consumers by supporting their health goals. The purpose of the study was to reveal people's preferences for Self-Determination theory derived app features of health-related apps that can potentially promote motivation and sustained use of such apps. Three discrete choice experiments, followed by a ranking task, were used to assess consumer preferences for specific app features that can support the basic needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness among respondents from Germany and Spain (N = 719). Participants preferred the autonomy supporting app features, namely making changes to the menu recommendations or self-selecting their rewards. The competence supporting features of levels of progress and feedback that provided encouragement together with facts were preferred across countries; however, presenting the feedback in a dynamic display was disliked in Germany. The relatedness supporting feature, presence of an anthropomorphic cue with the menu recommendations, was preferred in Germany but disliked in Spain. Health and fitness apps can benefit from including features that bring value to consumers by responding to their psychological needs and help them achieve their health goals. Allowing choice flexibility in app recommendations, providing feedback that is encouraging in addition to informative, and including gamification elements in health apps, can respond to consumer preferences and thereby increase engagement with apps. The study contributes to understanding how the theoretically derived features of health apps can be included in the design of apps to match consumer preferences.

Current patterns of meat consumption are considered unsustainable. Plant-based products are presented as a solution. However, while some plant-based products thrive, others do not make the cut due to the information “framing” effect issues related to the way information is presented to the consumers. Information on the nutrition and health properties of food products are usually made available at the point of purchase, but their effect on consumer product evaluation and subsequent purchase intent can also occur later, during or after consumption. This research demonstrates that the effect of nutrition information on product evaluation and purchase intention depends on when such information is made available–before first tasting or after first tasting–and that the information interacts with the taste experience in its effect on product evaluation and subsequent purchase intent. Using three plant-based products as an example, we conducted a cross-cultural experimental sensory evaluation with temporal order of information as the main between-subject experimental condition (informed before taste vs. informed after taste vs. control condition), and product experience phase (expectation vs. experience vs. post-experience phase) and information content as within-subject conditions. Information content had two levels: lower vs. higher share of oat protein in the product (i.e., source of protein vs. high in protein). The results indicate that information generally increases consumers’ purchase intentions with information before tasting having a higher weight when compared to the condition when information was presented after tasting. Presenting the information before tasting also mitigates a drop in the evaluation of taste after tasting, observed in the two other conditions. Further, taste acts as a healthiness cue, but the direction of the inference depends on the availability of health-related information: tasting in the informed condition increased the healthiness perception, whereas tasting in the uninformed condition had the opposite effect. Giving the information before the first tasting also increased the weight of healthiness as compared to taste in the formation of purchase intentions. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the effect of temporal order of information and product tasting have on the consumers’ product evaluations of plant-based products from theoretical and managerial perspectives.