Overcoming consumption barriers for conscious food products: The role of vivid sensory imagery
(A2020-64790)

AUTHORS

Elisabeth Steiner, Austrian Marketing University of Applied Sciences, Campus Wieselburg der Fachhochschule Wiener Neustadt GmbH; Thomas Poscher, Austrian Marketing University of Applied Sciences, Campus Wieselburg der FH Wiener Neustadt GmbH; Robert Fina, Austrian Marketing University of Applied Sciences, Campus Wieselburg der Fachhochschule Wiener Neustadt GmbH; Roswitha Steiner, Austrian Marketing University of Applied Sciences, Campus Wieselburg der Fachhochschule Wiener Neustadt GmbH; Kathrin Heim, Austrian Marketing University of Applied Sciences, Campus Wieselburg der Fachhochschule Wiener Neustadt GmbH; Udo Wagner, University of Vienna

KEYWORDS

Conscious consumption; sustainable consumption; consumption barriers

ABSTRACT

Despite of their rising importance, concepts such as conscious consumption face major challenges. Besides other factors, lay theories attributing lower sensory pleasure to conscious products represent potential consumption barriers. Literature provides reason to assume that sensory imagery could be a concept with high relevance for conscious consumption. However, up to date only scarce work investigates the role of sensory imagery in forming or removing consumption barriers and extant studies come to contradictory conclusions. The present paper focuses on understanding and combating lay theory based consumption barriers towards conscious (sustainable, organic and regional) food products. We draw on literature on sensory imagery and the availability-valence hypothesis and report an experimental study, involving sensory testing and VR technology, investigating the effects of vividness of sensory imagery on consumers’ pre- and post-consumption responses and behavioral intentions.