Qualified Health Claim Language affects Purchase Intentions for Green Tea Products in the United States

• Published in: Nutrients Vol. 11; no. 4; p. 921
• Main Authors: Berhaupt-Glickstein, Amanda, Hooker, Neal H, Hallman, William K
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 24.04.2019; MDPI
• Subjects: cancer; Cardiovascular diseases; Consumer Behavior; Consumers; Coronary artery disease; Diabetes mellitus (non-insulin dependent); Diet; Dietary supplements; Disease; Fatty acids; Food; Food Labeling - legislation & jurisprudence; Functional foods & nutraceuticals; Green tea; Health risks; Heart diseases; Humans; Marketing; Nutrition Policy; Nutrition research; Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; older adult; purchase intentions; qualified health claim; Tea; United States; United States Food and Drug Administration - legislation & jurisprudence; United States; United States > US; New Jersey; older adult; green tea; purchase intentions; cancer; qualified health claim
• ISSN: 2072-6643; 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu11040921

Qualified health claims (QHC) describe diet-disease relationships and summarize the quality and strength of evidence for a claim. Companies assert that QHCs increase sales and take legal action to ensure claims reflect their interests. Yet, there is no empirical evidence that QHCs influence consumers. Using green tea as a case study, this study investigated the effects of QHCs on purchase intentions among adults 55 years and older living in the US. An online survey using a between-subjects design examined QHCs about the relationship between green tea and the reduced risk of breast and/or prostate cancer or yukichi fruit juice and the reduced risk of gastrocoridalis, a fictitious relationship. QHCs written by a green tea company generated greater perceptions of evidence for the relationship, greater confidence in green tea and cancer, and increased purchase intentions for green tea than other QHCs. Factors that mitigated the claim's effects on purchase intentions are: Race/ethnicity; age; importance of health claims; supplement use; health; worry about health/becoming sick with cancer; worry that led to dietary change; green tea consumption; and familiarity with the green tea-cancer. Consumers who made health-related dietary change in the past year and consider health claims important indicated greater purchase intentions than others.