Balancing meaning and cost: The influence of health-conscious meaning pursuiton consumer food choices
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2024-07-02
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en
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The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between meaning pursuit and consumer food choices in the supermarket. More specifically, this study aimed to investigate whether consumers engaged in meaning pursuit tend to make less expensive food choices. Additionally, it aimed to explore the effects of the healthy-is-expensive intuition and health consciousness on the relationship between meaning pursuit and food choices. By understanding these dynamics, the study seeks to contribute to literature on consumer behaviour, specifically drawing upon the study by Mead and Williams (2022), focusing on opportunity cost consideration. The results show that meaning pursuit does not affect food choices in the supermarket, meaning both the price and the healthiness of food choices. This could be explained by other factors such as mood (Garg et al., 2007) and habit (Verplanken & Aarts, 1999; Wood & Neal, 2009). Furthermore, the difference between short-term and long-term goals could play an important role, as meaning mainly becomes relevant when considering long-term goals (Kim et al., 2014). By answering the call by Haws et al. (2017) for more research into trade-offs consumers face when making food choices and by testing whether the findings found my Mead and Williams (2022) about the importance of opportunity cost consideration hold up in the supermarket, this study highlights the importance of context in consumer decision-making by showing the same principles do not apply in every situation. Future research should focus on exploring more factors that could contribute to consumer food choices, in a variety of contexts.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen