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The Impact of Order Effects of Ingredient and Price on People’s Choices of Minimally Processed Food

University of British Columbia. UBC Wellbeing; UBC Food Hub; University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning

This experiment explored the influence of the presentation order of price and ingredients of food items on individuals' preference for minimally processed foods. We hypothesized that participants exposed to ingredients first would be more likely to purchase minimally processed foods compared to participants exposed to prices first. We recruited a total of 260 participants and after excluding incomplete survey respondents, our final sample size was 199 participants (143 females, 43 males, 9 nonbinary, and 4 preferred not to say). Our independent variable was the order in which participants saw the price or ingredients of food items. Participants completed our UBC Qualtrics online survey which included two groups: ingredients first (experimental group) and price first (control group). The items examined were: Soy Sauce, Peanut Butter, Brownies, Vegetable Soup, and Strawberry Jam. We conducted a Chi-Square Test of Independence and used the forced-choice question “Which of these two items are you most likely to buy?” to measure our dependent variable which was their preference for minimally processed foods. Unfortunately, there was no significant difference across conditions: our results did not support our hypothesis. We speculate on potential causes for our null findings and provide our clients with recommendations for future studies. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Report

eng

2023-09-07

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/85847

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/