Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers' Response to Health Information Complexity

Abstract

This study develops and empirically tests a model for understanding food consumers' health information seeking behaviour. Data were collected from 504 food consumers using a nationally representative consumer panel. The obtained Lisrel results suggest that consumers' product-specific health information seeking is positively affected by general food involvement and by usability of product-specific health information. Moreover, product-specific health information seeking and product-specific health information complexity are both positively related to post-purchase health-related dissonance. This link between information complexity and post-purchase dissonance has implications for marketers of food products since our results suggest that consumers might avoid purchasing the same food item again if post-purchase dissonance is experienced.

Keywords:

• food
• health information seeking
• health information complexity
• post-purchase dissonance

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a research grant from the Danish Council for Strategic Research, Programme Commission on Food and Health.