Antonella Samoggia, Aldo Bertazzoli and Arianna Ruggeri
Healthy food sales have increased in recent decades. Retailers are widening their marketing management approach, including the use of social media to communicate with consumers…
Abstract
Purpose
Healthy food sales have increased in recent decades. Retailers are widening their marketing management approach, including the use of social media to communicate with consumers and to promote healthy food. The purpose of this paper is to investigate European retailers’ social media communication content used to promote healthy food products, by analysing retailers’ Twitter messages and accounts characteristics, retailers’ Twitter messages content on healthy food and retailers’ Twitter accounts orientation on healthy food.
Design/methodology/approach
Data include approximately 74,000 tweets sent in 2016 from 90 corporate and brand accounts. The tweets were sent by the top 36 European retailers. Data elaboration includes quantitative content analysis of Twitter messages, which is used to identify healthy food categories’ occurrences and co-occurrences. Then, multiple multivariate-linear regression analyses explore the relation between retailers’ characteristics and healthy food messaging and between the overall content of retailer accounts and a healthy food focus.
Findings
The vast majority of retailers’ tweets on healthy food issues mainly address general health and sustainability issues. Tweets about food health and nutrition refer to food types, meals or consumer segments. Tweets about food sustainability refer to general issues. Analysis of retailer accounts shows that the larger the retailer is, the lower the relevance of healthy food. Retailers with high numbers of tweets and followers tend to decrease their attention to healthy food promotion. Compared to retailers with lower revenues, retailers with higher revenues tend to send a higher number of tweets that focus on healthy food but the incidence is lower compared to the overall accounts’ messaging.
Research limitations/implications
As the study focuses on a single category of food products, further research into other categories of retail products may contribute to a wider perspective. Future research may include graphical content/emoticons and extend the analysis to other social media platforms. Finally, social media data allow studies to cover a wide geographical area. However, in order to also value non-English written messaging, this research introduces some approximations in language interpretation.
Practical implications
The research provides insights into how retailers use social media and provides an overview of how retailers manage their social media communication in one of the most promising food product categories. Retailers manage social media communication content cautiously to minimise controversial issues. This study provides insights into the need to more effectively target the increasing number of social media users.
Originality/value
The research approach and findings of this study extend prior research on retailers’ communication management by improving the understanding of retailers’ use of social media and marketing communication content for their key products, focusing on healthy food.
Details
Keywords
Antonella Samoggia, Aldo Bertazzoli, Vaiva Hendrixson, Maria Glibetic and Anne Arvola
The purpose of the chapter is to explore the relation between women’s healthy eating intention and food attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and barriers with a focus on the effect of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the chapter is to explore the relation between women’s healthy eating intention and food attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and barriers with a focus on the effect of women’s income differences.
Methodology/approach
The research applies the Theory of Planned Behavior, including attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, perceived barriers, and ability opportunity resources. Close-ended survey responses of 704 women between ages 25 and 65 years, affluent and at-risk-of-poverty women in three EU-member countries were analyzed.
Findings
Women are mostly positively inclined towards healthy eating, and income does not differentiate women’s inclination. Influencing factors are perceived behavioral control, attitudes towards healthy eating, subjective norms, and level of knowledge regarding healthy food. Barriers, when present, are similar for lower or higher income women and relate to routinized family habits and food affordability and availability.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should thoroughly investigate family network and structure features, with a focus on family food preferences and habits.
Social and practical implications
Encouraging women’s healthy behavior also impacts children and men, and vice-versa. There is need to target all family components with enjoyable, self-rewarding, emotionally gratifying, and pleasant tasting food.
Originality/value
Income is an overestimated driver in healthy food choices. Women are strongly influenced by personal and environmental factors, mainly personal control, feelings, and family habits.
Details
Keywords
Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal
This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.
Abstract
Purpose/approach
This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.
Research implications
The chapters present original qualitative and quantitative research illustrating the complex relationship between gender and food. The need to understand the relationship intersectionally and in historical context is apparent and provisioning as caring emerges as a major theme.
Practical and social implications
Food is a human right yet it is not always and everywhere available and when it is not always humanly produced and healthful. The fact that food production and consumption is gendered cannot be ignored in the quest for feeding our planet.
Originality/value
The chapter and the volume are intended to illustrate some of the many ways that food and gender are related and to encourage gender scholars to continue to pay attention to food research.