When Food Scanner Apps Outperform Front‐of‐Pack Nutrition Labels

Camille Cornudet, Marie‐eve Laporte (), Fabienne Berger-Remy, Béatrice Parguel and Jean‐loup Richet ()
Additional contact information
Camille Cornudet: IAE Paris - Sorbonne Business School
Marie‐eve Laporte: RITM - Réseaux Innovation Territoires et Mondialisation - Université Paris-Saclay
Fabienne Berger-Remy: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Béatrice Parguel: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Jean‐loup Richet: LAB IAE Paris - Sorbonne - IAE Paris - Sorbonne Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: While consumers increasingly use food scanner apps as an alternative to front‐of‐pack labels, the effectiveness of these nutritional signals in promoting healthier food choices remains a topic of debate. This study examines when and under what conditions food scanner apps encourage healthier eating and outperform front‐of‐pack nutrition labels. It builds on four studies: a quantitative content analysis of over 16,000 online reviews and a survey of 86 respondents in an exploratory phase, along with two experiments that test the conceptual model. The findings identify three conditions where food scanner apps outperform front‐of‐pack labels: when the nutritional quality score of a product is poor, when consumers distrust the dominant players, and when mid‐range brands have average brand equity. These findings suggest that food scanner apps and front‐of‐pack labels complement rather than oppose each other, thus providing key insights for policymakers and food brand managers.

Keywords: food scanner app; nutritional signal; FOP label; healthier food choices; brand equity; consumer distrust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03-26
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://universite-paris-saclay.hal.science/hal-05013772v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Psychology and Marketing, 2025, ⟨10.1002/mar.22214⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://universite-paris-saclay.hal.science/hal-05013772v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05013772

DOI: 10.1002/mar.22214

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().