Positioning Strategies for Animal‐Friendly Products: A Social Dilemma Approach

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Lenka Riemsdijk,Paul T. M. Ingenbleek,Gerrita Veen,Hans C. M. Trijp
• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12240

100 THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS

LENKA VAN RIEMSDIJK , PAUL T. M. INGENBLEEK,

GERRITA VAN DER VEEN, AND HANS C. M. VAN TRIJP

Positioning Strategies for Animal-Friendly Products:

A Social Dilemma Approach

Many consumers express concerns about the welfare of animals in agri-

culture, but often refrain from purchasinganimal-friendly alternatives

that address their concerns. To support consumers in making choices

in line with their values and attitudes, this study approaches con-

sumer animal-friendly product choice as a dilemma between maximiz-

ing the buyer’sself-interest and maximizing societal interest. To address

this social dilemma, we developed and tested positioning strategies

that reinforce the animal welfare label with complementary consump-

tion values (functional, emotional, social, and epistemic). The results

from a choice experiment with Dutch chicken meat shoppers showed

that two strategies—emotional and epistemic—effectively increase con-

sumer value perceptions. These insights imply that animal-friendly

products positioned to invoke emotion or curiosity drive consumers

towards animal-friendly product choices, and that these strategies are

most effective forconsumers who base their choice solely on maximizing

either self-interest or societal interest.

Animal welfare is an important consumer issue subject to ongoing public

debate about how farm animals should be treated and the types of ori-

gin and welfare information that should be provided on product packages

(Clark et al. 2017; Vanhonacker and Verbeke 2014). The debate encour-

ages an ongoing dialogue about how the responsibility for animal welfare

should be distributed between consumers, producers and authorities such

as governments (Blokhuis et al. 2013). In the United States, the majority

of consumers are becoming more concerned about the welfare of animals

Lenka van Riemsdijk (lenka.vanriemsdijk@hu.nl) is Researcher at Wageningen University and

Research, The Netherlands, and Lecturer at University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Paul T. M. Ingenbleek (paul.ingenbleek@wur.nl)is Associate Professor of Marketing at Wageningen

Universityand Research, the Netherlands. Gerrita van der Veen(gerrita.vanderveen@hu.nl) is Director

of Research Centre for Innovation in Business and Communication at University of Applied Sciences

Utrecht, the Netherlands. Hans C. M. van Trijp (hans.vantrijp@wur.nl) is Professor of Marketing at

Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

The Journal of Consumer Affairs, Spring 2020: 100–129

DOI: 10.1111/joca.12240

© 2019 The Authors. The Journal of Consumer Affairs published by WileyPeriodicals, Inc. on behalf

of The American Council on Consumer Interests.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which

permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly

cited.

SPRING 2020 VOLUME 54, NUMBER 1 101

raised for food (Packaged Facts 2017), support the use of mandatory labels

regarding the level of animal welfare (Tonsor and Wolf 2011), and believe

that farm animal welfare should be a regulatory issue (Packaged Facts

2017). Studies in Europe show comparable patterns (European Commis-

sion 2016; Nocella, Hubbard, and Scarpa 2010). Labels and certications

are therefore an important tool for communicating with consumers to pro-

vide transparency on animal welfare practices (Ingenbleek et al. 2012;

Jahn, Schramm, and Spiller 2005) and enable them to make informed

choices that are in line with their values and attitudes.

While consumer concern may indicate a market opportunity for

animal-friendly products, research shows a discrepancy between stated

consumer concerns and attitudes on one hand and low market shares

on the other (de Jonge and van Trijp 2013; Harvey and Hubbard 2013;

Vanhonacker et al. 2007). Consumers state that they are concerned about

animal welfare and nd the issue important when buying animal-based

food products (European Commission 2016; Mayeld et al. 2007; Pack-

aged Facts 2017). Furthermore, the majority of consumers even say they

are willing to pay more for improved animal welfare (Aschemann-Witzel

and Zielke 2017; Clark et al. 2017); for example, a study conducted in

2014 among 2,000 U.S. shoppers revealed a willingness to pay 13–54%

more for improved cow welfare, depending on the welfare-related pro-

duction practice used (Wolf and Tonsor 2017). The market shares for

high-welfare products in 2015 were much lower than this high level of

consumer support would suggest however, comprising just 4% for organic

beef (Sustainable Food News 2016) and 1% for labeled grass-fed beef

(Cheung and McMahon 2017).

The current literature dedicated to explaining this discrepancy between

consumer attitudes and their purchase of animal-friendly products has

mainly focused on topics such as the trade-offs consumers are willing to

make between various perceived benets (e.g., healthiness, safety, taste

and animal welfare) (de Jonge and van Trijp 2013; Harper and Makatouni

2002; Verbeke and Viaene 2000), the role of consumer information and

trust in animal welfare labels (Jahn, Schramm, and Spiller 2005; Schröder

and McEachern 2004; Vanhonacker and Verbeke 2014), social desirabil-

ity bias (Auger and Devinney 2007; Carrington, Neville, and Whitwell

2010), and consumer individual differences in the perceptions of animal

welfare (Kendall, Lobao, and Sharp 2006; Vanhonacker et al. 2007). Pre-

vious studies have therefore primarily addressed the causes of the discrep-

ancy between the stated concern and the market share of animal-friendly

products; however, few have taken an actionable approach by developing

solutions that help consumers to make decisions more in line with their