Can Marketing Increase Willingness to Pay for Welfare-Enhanced Chicken Meat? Evidence from Experimental Auctions

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Consumer concern for animal welfare is currently not fully reflected in the market share of animal-friendly products. Marketing strategies for animal-friendly products typically emphasize sustainability-related benefits, such as animal welfare, while existing research suggests that consumers prioritize personally relevant benefits, such as taste and curiosity. This study tests the effectiveness of positioning strategies emphasizing personally relevant benefits, namely curiosity, in a real-life experiment at the point of purchase, also measuring the effects of certified labels and the impact of consumer attitudes towards eating meat. It conducts experimental auctions with 101 Dutch university students and measures their willingness to pay (WTP) for a lunch meal with chicken meat. Results indicate that both the positioning strategy and the certified label significantly increase consumer WTP, with the highest WTP generated when both elements are present (without providing evidence for an interaction effect). This implies that to maximize sales of welfare-enhanced meat companies should combine positioning strategies that emphasize personally relevant benefits with certified labels that can support the claimed animal friendliness. Since our results also suggest that consumers with conflicting feelings towards meat are less sensitive to such strategies, some care should be taken when designing awareness campaigns about the negative effects of meat consumption. ABSTRACT: Consumer concern for animal welfare is currently not fully reflected in the market share of welfare-enhanced meat. A possible solution is developing marketing strategies that emphasize personally relevant benefits such as taste and curiosity, instead of having a sole focus on sustainability-related benefits, since existing research indicates that the former are more appealing to most consumers. This study tests strategies positioning welfare-enhanced meat as personally relevant in a real-life experiment and how consumer attitudes towards eating meat influence reactions to the positioning strategies. The study conducts experimental auctions with 101 Dutch university students, manipulating the positioning strategy and a certified animal welfare label and measuring participants’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a lunch meal with chicken meat. Results indicate that all manipulations significantly increase consumer WTP, with higher WTP for certified labels than for the positioning strategy, and the highest WTP for the combination of both elements (without providing evidence for an interaction effect). This implies that companies should combine positioning strategies that emphasize personally relevant benefits with certified labels. Since the effectiveness of such strategies may be limited for consumers with conflicting feelings towards meat, some care should be taken when designing awareness campaigns about the effects of meat consumption.