'Animal Welfare' Practices along the Food Chain: How Does Negative and Positive Information Affect Consumers?

This study analyzes the mitigating effect of positive brand information on animal welfare on consumers' perceptions, attitudes, and buying intentions for meat products when provided before a negative information shock related to the same issue. By tackling this question, this study integrates with the existing agricultural economics literature, which mainly analyzed consumers' willingness to pay for meat with the animal welfare attribute, and the marketing literature, which extensively studied the interaction of positive and negative information in similar but different settings. Data are collected from a convenience sample of 394 university students through an online survey on fast food chicken breast sandwiches. The latent growth model (LGM) used to analyze the data allows understanding how different segments of consumers dynamically change their perceptions and attitudes when affected by contrasting information. This analysis provides meat companies a tool to tailor their brand information to communicate more effectively to their stakeholders, to build and protect their brand from the risks of negative shocks, and ultimately to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]