Exploring How Young Consumers’ Processing Snack Packaging Cues: An Extended Abstract

Obesity has become one of the most significant nutritional problems facing global populations. One of the interventions implemented by policy makers in an attempt to encourage consumers to adopt healthy dietary choices is nutrition labelling (NL). Still, such developed countries as the UK are facing the rise of an obesity rate, with young adults aged 16–24 being a high-risk category (Mintel 2013). Crisps and chocolate are some of the major energy-dense snacks that cause obesity (Astrup et al. 2006), when coupling with over consumption and lack of physical activity. This study seeks to understand how UK young adults’ perceptions towards snacks and snacking affect the role of brand cues and NL in their decision-making process. Of specific focus are energy-dense crisps and chocolate, which are easily accessible, portable and inexpensive. Previous consumer research in NL studies has predominantly adopted experimental research design to examine the role of external information and internal characteristics in influencing consumers’ use of nutritional information (NI), product evaluation and food intake. Yet, existing studies have clearly omitted the potential role of brand in a snack-buying decision, because the branding literature has long considered brand as heuristic (Keller 2008). Adopting the phenomenological approach, this study aims to offer a holistic understanding of the meaning young adults associate with snack, and the interplay between internal characteristics and external information involved in consumer information processing (CIP) within a snack-purchasing decision.