The Impact of Nutrition Claims on SKU Choice: An Investigation of the Moderating Impact of SKU and Category Characteristics

Faced by increasing emphasis on healthy lifestyles in the marketplace, manufacturers try to persuade consumers by using nutrition claims on their packaging. While experimental research suggests that such claims influence consumer behavior in a variety of ways, it remains unknown whether and to what extent such claims have an effect in actual grocery choice situations with a large variety of SKUs and large amounts of information to process. In this study, the authors investigate the effect of nutrition claims on the consumer´s SKU choice using an attribute-based choice model calibrated on UK household scanner purchase data from 29 food product categories. The authors find that the effect of nutrition claims strongly varies across SKUs and categories. The authors identify SKU and category factors that function as indicators for the success or failure of nutrition claims on products. The results show increased claim effectiveness for strong brands, relatively healthier SKUs, and SKUs with low discounts, while claims are also more effective in healthy categories, categories with a high advertising intensity, and in low-involvement categories.