Explaining organic product features in print ads – An examination of actual purchase behavior and spill-over effects
(A2019-8312)

AUTHORS

Phillip Frank, University of Rostock; Christian Brock, University of Rostock

KEYWORDS

actual purchase behavior; intention-behavior gap; organic groceries

ABSTRACT

Allocating product specific information (PSI) on organic features at the point-of-sale (POS) was found to reduce the intention-behavior gap. While numerous stimuli at the POS contrib-ute to consumers´ cognitive overload and aversive consumer behavior, this research transfers organic PSI from the touchpoint ‘POS’ to ‘print ads’. The impact of these ads featuring low- and high-involving groceries on actual purchase behavior in the advertised category as well as spill-over effects to non-advertised categories was examined with a combination of a field ex-periment and observation data (n = 242). Additionally, boundary conditions and amplifiers of the spill-over effect were identified. The results indicate that PSI print ads can enhance actual organic purchase rates in low in-volvement categories. Additionally, the organic purchase spills over to other non-advertised categories. The effect is stronger for green or health conscious consumers, consumers perceiv-ing high ambivalence towards the organic factor and consumers with low organic purchase intentions.