The impact of social influence on baby food consumers´ intentions and attitudes

• Autor(a) principal: Martins, Fábio Miguel Ferrony Varela
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/29353
• topic: Social influence; Ingroup bias; Outgroup; Credibility; Regulatory focus; Baby food consumption; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

It is widely known that several factors are involved and impact baby food consumer’s behaviours. Communication (mainly with parents) is a very crucial aspect in Baby Food business, where understanding what really impacts the consumer intentions and attitudes can be a key success factor. In this sense, the present research aims to understand the impact of social influence on consumers’ intentions and attitudes and how Regulatory Focus may moderate this relationship. In this stage, parents are very permeable to social influence coming from different social groups (both ingroup and outgroup). Although it is expected that other parents may have a greater influence (ingroup bias), paediatricians (outgroup) are still a reference that strongly influences parents’ intentions and attitudes towards their baby. This high credibility that came from paediatricians could overlap the strength of ingroup bias and make the outgroup a stronger influencer. Another factor that can impact the communication success is the Regulatory Focus theory, that postulates that same individuals may have the same goals, but they differ in the way they will use to reach them (with promotion or prevention focus). In terms of communication, promotion-focused individuals seek information about desired properties of a product and those that are related to approaching positive outcomes. On the other hand, prevention-focused individuals tend to look for information regarding product’s shortcomings and to product-related features that do or do not help them avoid negative outcomes. This research applied a quantitative research method. An experiment tested the influence of four different baby food communications (ingroup-promotion; ingroup-prevention; outgroup-promotion; outgroup/prevention) on consumers’ intention to recommend, attitude toward brand, and intention to purchase. Results showed that Social influence did not impact intention to recommend. Attitude toward brand and purchase intention were positively impacted by the outgroup (versus ingroup). Relative to the Regulatory Focus as a moderator, there was no impact of the different communications using promotion/prevention on consumers’ intentions and attitudes. Results are discussed for social influence, regulatory focus, and communication effectiveness for baby food consumption in theoretical and managerial levels.