Humanizing Food Products Through a Collective of Producers: Rethinking Human Presence Beyond the Individual

Sonia Capelli () and Werle Carolina ()
Additional contact information
Sonia Capelli: MAGELLAN - Laboratoire de Recherche Magellan - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises (IAE) - Lyon, Iaelyon - Iaelyon School of Management - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon
Werle Carolina: EESC-GEM - Grenoble Ecole de Management, IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry] - Université Savoie Mont Blanc

Grenoble Ecole de Management (Post-Print) from HAL

Abstract: Consumers often lack information about who produces the goods they buy. Across three experiments, we examine whether signaling that a food product is made by a "farmer-owned cooperative" humanizes the product and increases perceptions of support and purchase intentions. Study 1 shows that a farmer-owned label enhances perceived human presence and, in turn, helping perceptions and purchase intention. Study 2 demonstrates that this effect is specific to producer collectives : investor-owned claims reduce human presence relative to both farmer-owned and control conditions. Study 3 shows that the humanization effect is robust across cooperative size. Together, the findings reveal that collective ownership can humanize products when the collective is directly involved in production, offering insight for producer-focused communication and practical guidance for cooperative brands.

Keywords: human-presence; Food product; Cooperative; farmer-owned (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in 55th Annual Conference of the European Marketing Academy, European Marketing Academy, Jun 2026, Bath (UK), United Kingdom

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:gemptp:hal-05675886

Access Statistics for this paper

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