How product information and source credibility affect consumer attitudes and intentions towards innovative food products

Innovative foods often offer consumers an important contribution to their quality of life. Nevertheless, consumers often encounter technology-based food innovations with a certain degree of scepticism. To counteract this scepticism, information about the innovative product is often communicated. However, two elements must be taken into account to ensure that the given information does not reinforce the scepticism: first, the right amount of information and, second, the source of information and its credibility. In order to be able to implement these elements effectively in a communication strategy, this paper uses two online experiments and analyses of variance to investigate the impact of different amounts of information and different sources of information on consumers' product evaluations (i.e., affective attitude, cognitive attitude, and behavioural intention). Study 1 found that more information does not always lead to better product evaluations. Furthermore, the results of study 2 show that independent or scientific sources of information are perceived as more credible and tend to lead to a higher product evaluation. Moreover, higher credibility measured by attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise leads to a significantly higher product evaluation. From these results, communication strategies can be designed that gain higher consumer acceptance for technology-based food innovations.