Master’s Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, grade: DE: 1; DK: 12, Aarhus School of Business, language: English, abstract: OBJECTIVE: In times when consumers’ health and healthy eating has become a central priority in the European Commissions’ mission to protect the interests of consumers the European legislation has put a big emphasis on the regulations concerning functional foods in the European market by adopting a list of authorised health claims which have been scientifically proven. There is an increasing number of studies dealing with consumers’ perception of health claims and their understanding all of which have considered different factors influencing consumers’ responses. However none of these studies has considered the possible impact of the food label’s context factors such as brand, colour, image or the ‘bio’ sign. The aim of the present study is to determine whether such factors in combination with other possible influential sources of information which are not part of the food label like mass media influence the level of understanding of health claims and the way consumers perceive them. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: 480 respondents from Germany participated in the study. Margarine spread bearing a health claim of a less popular functional ingredient was presented to the participants who were divided into 16 groups (N=30 per group) and each group was presented with a different version of the product based on the variations in the levels of the chosen food label’s context factor stimuli. Consumers attitudes towards the health claim were measured as well as the level of their understanding of the claim. A repeated measures factor was also used by giving the respondents to read a newspaper article explaining the benefits of the functional ingredient after which their attitude and understanding were re-evaluated. RESULTS: The newspaper article
