Misleading Marketing Communication: Assessing the Impact of Potentially Deceptive Food Labelling on Consumer Behaviour

Description

Using the case of food labelling, this book demonstrates that the line between fair and potentially misleading communication can be approached in empirical terms, supplementing the predominantly political and legal deliberations that determine how society deals with these issues. By first critically reviewing the legal conception of misleading commercial practices manifest in EU law, the authors discuss whether and how it can be transposed into empirically measurable terms. Presenting four complementary experimental studies targeting recurrent grey-zone scenarios on the Danish food market, the book illustrates the potential of the so-called ShopTrip test paradigm which simulates and registers real-life e-shopping behaviour as it unfolds while yielding new types of data against which opposing assessments of potential misleadingness can be matched. The results are discussed in the light of possible paths of theoretical explanation and implications for future regulative practices, including companies’ self-regulation. Preface Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures List of Tables Part I: Background Chapter 1: Setting the Scene References Chapter 2: The Legal Conception of Misleading Product Labelling and its Operationalization 2.1 The Prohibition against Unfair Commercial Practices and Misleading Labelling in EU Law 2.2 Operationalizing the Legal Criteria References Chapter 3: Measuring Misleadingness: The Preference-Conscious Choice Modelled and Observed 3.1 Aims and Scope 3.2 The ShopTrip Set-up: First Overview 3.2.1 Ecological Validity versus Experimental Control 3.2.2 Simulated e-Shopping 3.2.3 Adding and Assessing Preference Consciousness References Part II: Studies Chapter 4: Study 1: Low-Fat Claims on Real-Market Products 4.1 Fairness Challenges and Target PMEs 4.2 Test Design 4.2.1 Target Products 4.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 4.2.3 Participants 4.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 4.3 Results and Discussion References Chapter 5: Study 2: Low-fat Claims on Fictitious Products 5.1 Fairness Challenges and Target PMEs 5.2 Test Design 5.2.1 Target Products 5.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 5.2.3 Participants 5.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 5.3 Results and Discussion Chapter 6: Study 3: What’s behind the Keyhole 6.1 Fairness Challenges and (Accidental?) PMEs 6.2 Test Design and Procedure 6.2.1 Target Products 6.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 6.2.3 Participants 6.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 6.3 Results and Discussion References Chapter 7: Study 4: “Local” by Facts or by Atmosphere? 7.1 Fairness Challenges and PMEs 7.2 Test Design and Procedure 7.2.1 Target Products 7.2.2 Fillers/Distracters 7.2.3 Participants 7.2.4 Apparatus and Procedure 7.3 Results and Discussion References Part III: General Discussion Chapter 8: Why Do Consumers Get it Wrong? 8.1 Allowing for the Human Factor 8.2 The Need for Semantic and Pragmatic Co-creation 8.3 System 1 versus System 2 8.4 A Quest for Situational Relevance 8.5 What We See is All There Is: The X-factor of Visual Attention References Chapter 9: Implications for Fair Labelling Practices: How to Get it Right? 9.1 Contributing to a Wider Debate 9.2 Commercial Claims 9.3 Non-Commercial Regulated Labels References Chapter 10: Concluding Remarks References Appendix 1: Example of standard ShopTrip setup Appendix 2: ShopTrip setup in version adopted for eyetracking (Study 4) References Index