Unhealthy Food
Journal of Health Communication, 12:173 185, 2007
Copyright # Taylor Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1081 0730 print/1087 0415 online
DOI: 10.1080/10810730601152755
Healthy or Unhealthy Slogans:
That s the Question. . .
LEEN ADAMS
Department of Marketing, Ghent University, Belgium
MAGGIE GEUENS
Ghent University and Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School,
Belgium
An experiment was conducted to examine the effect on adolescents of different health
appeals (healthy versus unhealthy) in ads for healthy and unhealthy perceived foods.
The results did not reveal a main effect of product or slogan, but indicated a
significant interaction effect between slogan and product. The healthy slogan only
led to significantly more positive ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
In this case, consumers intuitive theories about persuasive tactics in advertising will
be evoked, leading to a negative instead of a positive impact of the health claim
(Wright, 1986). With respect to adolescents, previous research shows that although
adolescents are aware of these tactics, they do not always take them into account
when forming an attitude (Boush, Friestad, Rose, 1994; Linn, de Benedictus,
Delucchi, 1982; Roedder, 1981). Irrespective of the fact that adolescents may be less
likely to discount a healthy claim because of its potential manipulative intent,
however, it is not certain that a healthy promotional strategy also will be more
effective in adolescents. Because of the health consciousness trend in society, one
could assume that adolescents, too, generally will respond more positively to healthy
food products and to healthy slogans. On the other hand, when looking at their
current food preferences, the opposite result is also feasible (Birch, 1999; Birch
Fisher,
1998; Donkin, Naele, Tilston, 1993; Skinner, Carruth, Bounds, Ziegler, 2002).
Product Category Characteristics. Advertisements are most likely to be processed in
a top down fashion, which means that consumers tend to classify products first into
categories and then rely on their prior product category knowledge to evaluate the
advertised brand (Meyers Levy Tybout,