Impact of health-related claims on the perception of other product attributes

New EU legislation (EU Regulation 1924/2006) will allow a number of nutrition and health claims in food products. The objective of this research was to study how health claims affect consumers’ perception of other product attributes. A survey with a total of 4612 respondents from the Nordic countries explored consumers’ perceptions of attractiveness, healthiness, naturalness, tastiness and ability to reduce risk of disease by comparing ratings of products with and without health claims. Used claims varied in their benefit, active ingredient, claim structure and framing. The results showed that health claims had a moderate but mostly negative impact on the perception of other product attributes; the most significant impact was decrease in perceived naturalness. Consumers could also interpret the benefits in claims as intended. The wording of the claim had only small impact on the perception of the products, whereas earlier market presence of the ingredient had a large impact: differences among the Nordic countries reflected the previous exposure to health claims. The findings from this study suggest that consumers do not imply other health benefits from health claims and the health claim per se is not likely to cause any unrealistic positive inferences in perceived product quality.     

Current Economic Issues at the FTC

This paper provides a summary of recent economic issues ofparticular interest in the Bureau of Economics (``BE') of the FTC. Further developmentof empirical analyses suitable for antitrust investigations is currently of particularinterest to BE. This paper outlines several areas where BE has focused in the past yearincluding: (1) Unilateral effects; (2) coordinated interaction; (3) mergerretrospectives; (4) natural experiments; (5) price discrimination; (6) intellectual property; (7) healthcare;and (8) energy. For each area, we discuss the issues under consideration, the work thatis being done, and what additional research would be useful.     

Injured Workers' Underreporting in the Health Care Industry: An Analysis Using Quantitative, Qualitative, and Observational Data

Underreporting of occupational injuries was examined in four health care facilities using quantitative, qualitative, and observational data. Occupational Safety and Health Administration logs accounted for only one-third of the workers' compensation records; 45 percent of injured workers followed by survey had workers' compensation claims. Workers reported 63 percent of serious occupational injuries. Underreporting is explained by time pressure and workers' doubts about eligibility, reputation, income loss, and career prospects. Though aware of underreporting, managers subtly believe in workers' moral hazard behaviors.     

Front-label health claims: when less is more

Growing global attention has been directed toward labeling the ingredients, processing methods, and health claims of food. Accompanying this attention is an interest in how consumers process or understand the information on such labels. This article examines how the length of a front-label claim influences the nutritional beliefs and evaluation of a product when used in combination with complete back-label information. The results indicate that the presence of a shorter health claim on the front of the package (in combination with a more complete claim on the back) leads a person to generate more attribute-specific thoughts about the product and fewer general evaluative thoughts compared to longer health claims. These shorter health claims also led to more favorable beliefs about the product and to a more positive image of the product. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for policy makers, consumers and researchers.     

European consumer preferences for beef with nutrition and health claims: A multi-country investigation using discrete choice experiments

The European Union (EU) nutrition labelling policy aims to facilitate consumers’ food choice, stimulate innovation and facilitate the circulation of foods bearing claims across countries. However, the beef industry has not fully taken advantage of utilizing nutrition and health claims based on the EU nutrition labelling policy to differentiate beef products in the market. This study investigates consumer preferences for nutrition and health claims on lean beef steak. Two choice experiments were conducted among 2400 beef consumers in four EU countries (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, United and United Kingdom). Multinomial logit and error component models were estimated. Our results generally suggest that consumer valuation of nutritional and health claims varies across countries. In Belgium, the Netherlands and France, nutrition and health claims on saturated fat yielded higher utilities than claims on protein and/or iron, while the opposite was found among consumers in the UK. The results imply that marketing opportunities related to nutrition and health claims on beef are promising, but that different nutritional marketing strategies are necessary within different countries.     

Economics at the FTC: Data Intensive Mergers and Policy R&D

Economics at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) supports both the competition and consumer protection missions of the agency. In this year’s essay we discuss a range of activities focusing on data-intensive antitrust cases in the hospital and consumer products industries. We also discuss our most recent work on gasoline pricing. Policy-focused research and competition advocacy takes center stage as we discuss some health care advocacy work in the administration of pharmaceutical insurance benefits and efforts to understand the real estate business more completely. Finally, we describe our efforts to quantify the extent of “identity theft”.     

Risking public health by approving some health claims? – The case of phosphorus

There is a well-established consensus on the many biological functions of essential nutrients, and related general function health claims will be soon authorised in the European Union. Such claims about the role of nutrients in the body’s growth, development and functioning could provide a powerful marketing tool and significant increase in the consumption of specific food products. Even though these claims are scientifically substantiated, there are both health and ethical concerns about whether such claims should be allowed where the intake of these nutrients easily exceeds the recommendations and a bigger intake might have adverse affects. The case of phosphorus and its role in the maintenance of normal bone is discussed.     

The evolution of language complexity in qualified health claims

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has oversight for qualified health claims (QHCs). These claims emerged as the result of a legal dispute about commercial speech rights on dietary supplements and food products. The initial court ruling allowed manufacturers to include diet–disease information on packaging, when supporting evidence does not meet the traditional threshold of Significant Scientific Agreement. QHCs communicate about a potential health benefit of the consumption of a food or supplement, and due to their nature, are required to specify the balance of evidence behind the diet–disease relationships. As a result, the language contained in QHCs is complex, making them difficult for consumers to understand. The language has been further complicated by a continuing series of court challenges about how scientific evidence is described in QHCs. To understand the evolution of QHC language, we review the progression of court rulings surrounding qualified health claims and subsequent regulations by the FDA. This analysis provides a case study of the challenging task of effective science communication within a dynamic food litigation and policy environment.     

Genetically modified food labeling: The impacts of message and messenger on consumer perceptions of labels and products

We analyze responses to a survey designed to elicit consumer reaction to various approaches to labeling genetically modified (GM) foods. Consumers were shown sample labels that differed with respect to claims concerning the presence and potential effects of GM ingredients and the agency that certified these claims. A sample of 1898 US consumers rated 3681 labels with regard to the credibility and adequacy of the information content, with regard to perceived health and environmental impacts of the product and with regard to purchase intent. Simple claims that a product contains GM ingredients are viewed as most credible while simple claims of no GM content are viewed as most adequate. Label claims certified by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are, in general, viewed as most credible and adequate and products with FDA certified claims are perceived to have fewer long-term health problems. Several practical policy implications of the results are discussed, including how different label messages may impact consumer reactions in markets involving GM products.     

Health claims and consumers’ behavioral intentions: The case of soy-based food

This research evaluates the impact of two soy-specific health claims (highlighting FDA approval along with scientific results and simply describing scientific results) on stated behavioral intentions toward soy-based food using a survey administered by Ipsos-Observer to a nationally representative web panel in the summer of 2007. Our research design randomly assigned respondents to a health claim. Three ordered probit models (non-soy users; infrequent soy users; regular soy users) show that non-soy users and infrequent soy users who were exposed to either FDA health claim or general health claim are significantly more likely to eat soy-based food products. FDA or general health claim, however, did not change the behavioral intentions of regular soy users. These results suggest that soy consumption status moderates the impacts of health claims on behavioral intentions. However, the impact of FDA health claim did not differ from that of general health claim, indicating that the word ‘FDA’ did not add any additional information to consumers beyond the general health claim.     

Do firms leverage the FDA nutrient label rounding rules to generate favorable nutrition fact panels or health claims?

The increasing incidence of nutrition related health concerns has made food labeling an important policy issue. Previous work suggests the importance of communicating nutrition information to consumers through product packaging. This paper investigates the role of labeling guidelines, which allow the rounding of calorie and nutrient levels on nutrition fact panels and affects front of package claims. We examine ready-to-eat cereal products as a bundle of nutrient attributes, and estimate the likelihood and magnitude of the rounding of specific nutrients and calories. We find systematic rounding, both up and down, of several nutrients, which affects allowable health claims and may influence consumer product choice and health outcomes.     

Mobilizing a network to develop a field: Enriching the business actor's mobilization analysis toolkit

This paper tells the story of a thought experiment on deliberate network mobilization to advance radical innovation adoption in health care. The health care industry is said to experience a personalized medicine (PM) revolution, driven by simultaneous thrusts toward cost-effectiveness and new patient-value-centered advances in targeted treatment, digitization and preventive medicine enabling the personalization of care. Even though this revolution is almost unequivocally welcomed, adoption rates seem to disappoint. This paper seeks to explain the behavioral challenges faced by a business actor if it would take up the role of network mobilizer looking to develop the health care field – i.e. to impact the fundamental formal and informal institutions that structurate behavior – to accommodate this radical innovation. We enrich the strategic nets perspective on mobilization with stakeholder and social movement concepts into a framework to analytically tackle the behavioral challenges of mobilization. In a thought experiment with leading Belgian health care experts, we identify six voids remaining in this framework. Through a further abductive reflection on the information needs underlying these voids, we propose three new tools for mobilization analysis thereby contributing to a theory of network and field development from a business actor perspective.     

Food health claims – What consumers understand

Issues pertaining to consumer understanding of food health claims are complex and difficult to disentangle because there is a surprising lack of multidisciplinary research aimed at evaluating how consumers are influenced by factors impacting on the evaluation process. In the EU, current legislation is designed to protect consumers from misleading and false claims but there is much debate about the concept of the ‘average consumer’ referred to in the legislation.     

Implementing: Alternatives,costs, and benefits

This essay provides a conceptual framework for thinking about the problem of implementing (i.e. getting things done) as part of the larger process of managing. We shall isolate some alternative approaches to that implementing problem and briefly examine the underlying beliefs, the accompanying technologies, and the attendant costs/benefits of those alternatives. We shall then make a few suggestions about appropriate alternatives for the decade ahead.     

Telemedicine competition,pricing, and technology adoption: Evidence from talk therapists

This paper examines how new telemedicine competitors affected incumbent health care providers during the first waves of COVID-19. Using data from the largest mental health provider search platform in Canada, I show that increased telemedicine competition in a market caused incumbent providers in that market to stop offering income-based discounts to patients. I isolate the causal effect of competition in a difference-in-differences framework, comparing providers before and after a supply shock on the platform that exogenously assigned some markets new telemedicine search results. I find that higher-quality providers are more likely to stop income-based discounts when facing new telemedicine entrants, while lower-quality providers are more likely to exit the platform, which is consistent with telemedicine providers competing for more price-sensitive patients. The results suggest that expanding telemedicine options had a heterogeneous effect on the affordability of care.     

信用、信息与规制——守信/失信的经济学分析

本文针对中国现实经济中的广泛存在的失信现象，从经济学特别是信息经济学的角度，分析了信用的性质，失信的种类与原因，防止失信的市场机制与政府规制。本文的主要观点是，从信息的角度分析信用问题是个很好的视角。     

Professionals in the NHS – a case study of business process re-engineering

Rather than providing evidence of business process re-engineering (BPR) as another example of cultural change rhetoric, this case study shows BPR as a substantive initiative that has had a considerable impact on health care professionals. A hybrid of differing bureaucratic professions allows for a diversity specific to the health service. The study highlights a number of controversial issues unique to health care professionals, particularly in the areas of job redesign, multiskilling and empowerment.     

Time preferences and food choices: Evidence from a choice experiment

Time preferences have been recognized by numerous studies as an important driver of a number of healthy and environmentally-friendly behaviors. In this study, we first examined if healthy and environmentally-friendly food labels (e.g., USDA organic, carbon trust, health claim, and calories) are relevant in driving food choices. Second, using the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) scale we analyzed if individuals with different time preferences have different choice behavior and valuations in relation to these labels. Results indicate that consumers value both healthy and environmentally-friendly attributes displayed on labels. Results also suggest that time preferences can significantly influence consumers’ valuation for the USDA organic label, the presence of health claims and the calorie amount attribute.     

基本医疗卫生制度公共提供的经济学分析——对“新医改方案”基本医疗卫生制度公共提供的政策解读

我国城乡居民普遍存在＂看病难、看病贵＂的现象,造成这种现象的一个重要原因是基本医疗卫生制度的提供过度市场化。基本医疗卫生制度具有公共产品的属性,应该采用公共提供的方式。2009年4月7日我国出台了＂医药卫生体制改革近期重点实施方案（2009-2011年）＂,＂新医改方案＂要求把基本医疗卫生制度作为公共产品向全民提供。在对基本医疗卫生制度的公共产品属性进行了分析之后,探讨了＂新医改方案＂对于缓解我国城乡居民＂看病难、看病贵＂的积极作用。