The conceptual framework that is developed in the following is presented in Fig. 2.
Media
Research has stressed the differences in the impacts of lean and rich media channels on (food) product quality perceptions (Holt et al. 2015; Ledford 2012). The strong influence of lean media channels on consumers’ food choices has been well established within the literature. For example, radio advertisements and advertisements in children’s magazines can positively influence unhealthy food choices (Smith et al. 2019). A similar relationship is expected for NHLFP consumption as lean media channels often serve as an important food-related information source for corresponding consumer segments (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b). Therefore we assume, in line with the propositions of Degeratu, Rangaswamy, and Wu (2000) and Lipowski and Bondos (2018), that lean media channels will positively influence the perception of extrinsic and credence quality cues.
Concerning rich media channels, marketing channels other than social media platforms have also been linked to a change in consumers’ food quality perception. For example, television ads influence the brand attachment of food products and lead to a change in consumers’ credence and intrinsic quality attribute awareness (Boyland et al. 2016; Cairns 2019; Kelly et al. 2019). Likewise, and in line with our research objective, similar observations have been made for social media platforms (Dunlop, Freeman, and Jones 2016). Across social media platforms, marketing strategies such as influencer marketing can strongly affect unhealthy (Boyland et al. 2016; Coates et al. 2020) and often weakly influence healthy (Williams et al. 2014) eating habits among adults as well as children. Familiarity with social media platforms is also likely to influence consumers’ receptiveness to intrinsic food quality cues as different social media trends have affected the importance that consumers place on food colors (Southey 2019). Furthermore, it can raise consumers’ awareness of credence food quality attributes, such as environmentally sustainable production practices (Sogari et al. 2017). Therefore, SMM strategies can clearly influence consumers’ attitude toward intrinsic quality cues as well as the credence quality attributes of food products. In the case of traditional luxury products, SMM has been found to lead to higher brand awareness and improved brand image, thereby persuading and engaging consumers more strongly, which highlights an impact on extrinsic quality cues (Chu, Kamal, and Kim 2013; Kim and Ko 2010).
H1a
Lean media channels will positively influence perceptions of extrinsic quality cues and credence quality attributes.
H1b
Rich media channels will positively influence perceptions of extrinsic and intrinsic quality cues as well as credence quality attributes.
Observation
Concerning consumers’ product observation, Nelson (1970) subdivided this process into consumers’ search and experience qualities. Search qualities are needed for evaluating product attributes such as color and price, which can be determined before purchase, while experience qualities result from previous consumption. Hence, experience qualities develop only after purchasing a given food product (Ford, Smith, and Swasy 1988). Both qualities are relevant to our research case (Butterworth et al. 2020), as some of the described luxury dimensions of NHLFPs are purely accessible through consumers’ search qualities (e.g., product price) while non-observable luxury attributes (e.g., health benefits) can only be examined through experience qualities. In particular, the latter is likely to influence perceptions of NHLFP quality cues meaningfully. As NHFLP health-related luxury dimensions are not intuitively visible, easy utilization of these luxury dimensions for socially comparable activities is not possible. To address this problem, consumers build on the credence-related extrinsic, intrinsic, and experience quality attributes of NHLFPs (Southey 2019). For example, they purchase brightly colored superfoods as other consumers associate these colors with an above average health benefit (Southey 2019). However, utilizing the right quality cues, such as accepting a given bitterness in taste or purchasing brightly colored food, both synonyms for particularly health products, will certainly be experience related. At the same time, search qualities are important for identifying traditional food product luxury dimensions, such as the product price.
The literature has determined that the existing levels of consumers’ search and experience qualities influence their product quality perception (Migliore et al. 2015). Concerning consumers’ search qualities, the link with respective product quality cues is not as well established. However, higher search qualities have been found to influence consumers’ evaluation of intrinsic quality cues and experience-related product attributes (Sogn‐Grundvåg and Østli 2009). Consumers’ experience of quality, on the other hand, can influence all four described quality cues of food products (Migliore et al. 2015; Schmitt 1999). In particular, past experience is strongly linked to the degree of importance that consumers attribute to intrinsic and extrinsic product quality cues (Frez Muñoz, Steenbekkers, and Fogliano 2016; Schmitt 1999). Furthermore, when investigating buyers’ behavior in the case of fruit products more closely, Migliore et al. (2015) found that their product experience influences their perception of credence and quality attributes.
H2a
Search and experience qualities will positively influence perceptions of extrinsic and intrinsic quality cues.
H2b
Search and experience qualities will positively influence perceptions of credence and experience quality attributes.
Psychographic characteristics
Previous research (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b) has identified consumers’ involvement with social media platforms as well as their health and environmental awareness as strongly distinguishing NHLFP consumer groups. High involvement with social media platforms will, by definition, lead to intensified usage of social media platforms. At the same time, higher social media involvement is unlikely to substitute the utilization of lean media channels substantially (Kilian, Hennigs, and Langner 2012). Rather, consumer segments with high social media involvement have been found to be surprisingly heterogeneous, and high levels of lean media usage can simultaneously be present (Kilian, Hennigs, and Langner 2012). Involvement with social media platforms is also likely to influence consumers’ food product observation. For example, consumers have been found to inform themselves extensively about food attributes through social media platforms (Hemmerling et al. 2016), which makes it likely that these platforms will influence NHLFP observational criteria, too (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b). In addition, consumers’ desire to self-represent and to compare their activities with those of others is an essential driver of social media platform utilization (Alhabash and Ma 2017; DeVito, Birnholtz, and Hancock 2017). Thus, consumers who show a high tendency to engage in socially comparable activities are also likely to use social media platforms more intensively.
H3a
Higher involvement with social media will positively influence the degree of rich media channel utilization.
H3b
Higher involvement with social media will positively influence search and experience qualities.
H3c
Consumers’ desire to self-represent will positively influence their degree of rich media channel utilization.
H3d
Consumers’ desire to self-represent will positively influence search and experience qualities.
The positive relationship between health awareness and healthy food choices, especially for fruits, has been well established (Giampietri et al. 2021). In addition, health awareness is likely to influence the degree to which consumers gather health-related information positively, like the health benefits of particular food products. Consumers’ accumulation of more information will affect their level of experience with a given food product as well as their product examination (search qualities). During the process of acquiring information, consumers access rich and lean media channels to different degrees, younger consumers accessing social media platforms more often (Kempen et al. 2012). This fits an emerging body of literature that has highlighted the importance of social media channels to consumers for acquiring and sharing health-related information (Zhao and Zhang 2017).
H4a
Health awareness will positively influence the degree of lean and rich media channel utilization.
H4b
Health awareness will positively influence consumers’ search and experience qualities.
Environmental awareness usually describes consumers’ attitudes toward environmentally sensitive consumption and living practices (do Paço et al. 2013; Roberts 1996). Media cues provide consumers with the opportunity to inform themselves about environmental issues, and lean and rich media cues differ in their coverage of environmental topics (Stoddart and MacDonald 2011). In particular, social media platforms are becoming a central tool for addressing consumers’ environmental awareness (Sumit, Swapnil, and Archana 2018, p. 117ff.). This is because social media platforms provide a greater depth of information and an environment in which likeminded social networks can develop and topics centered on environmental sustainability issues are widely shared (Williams et al. 2014). Although the influence of environmental awareness on social media usage has not received much attention until now, we expect a positive relationship to exist. People with higher awareness levels are often more willing to share their experience and expertise with others, which drives them to use social media platforms, as social networks can be tied there more easily (Johnson et al. 2014; Loebnitz et al. 2015). In addition, environmental awareness has been found to influence consumers in their product evaluation as more attention is paid to extrinsic and experience quality attributes (Loebnitz et al. 2015). This shift is likely to be observable through the changing search and experience qualities of these consumers and thus should be considered in this framework.
H5a
Environmental awareness will positively influence the degree of lean and rich media channel utilization.
H5b
Environmental awareness will positively influence search and experience qualities.
Socio-demographic characteristics
Among consumers’ socio-demographic characteristics, their level of income and their age strongly determine their NHLFP consumer segment affiliation (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b). Household income has also been identified as an important predictor of lean and rich media usage (Speck and Elliott 1997), in which higher levels of income can lead to greater use of rich media sources, particularly social media platforms (Perrin 2015). At the same time, households’ level of income might positively influence their usage of newspapers, which indicates a positive influence on various lean media channels (Anderson 2018). With regard to consumers’ age, one can observe that younger age groups are less likely to read daily print newspapers than older age groups (television consumption remains almost equally high) and that they access the internet as well as social media platforms significantly more often (Perrin 2015). More importantly, different age groups differ in their perceived media richness of the same media channels, which further motivates the inclusion of age in the research model of this study (Lipowski and Bondos 2018).
H6a
Higher income will positively influence the degree of lean and rich media utilization.
H6b
Higher age has a negative influence on the degree of rich media utilization.
Product quality attributes
In line with the framework introduced by Luning, Marcelis, and Jongen (2002), food quality needs to be understood as a multidimensional concept that is influenced by extrinsic and intrinsic quality cues as well as credence and experience quality attributes (see Fig. 2) (Alonso, Paquin, and Mangin 2002).
Extrinsic quality cues, such as the product brand or quality seals, like a product’s country of origin, can positively influence the quality perception of consumers (Otter, Prechtel, and Theuvsen; Silva et al. 2017). Brands and quality seals function as quality indicators and assist consumers in reducing the uncertainty prior to their purchasing decision. Once the product brand has been examined, consumers tend to move on to other extrinsic food product characteristics, such as product price and packaging, for further quality evaluation (Vranešević and Stančec 2003). Both, the product price (Kirchler et al. 2010) and the packaging (Bou-Mitri et al. 2020), can influence the perceived product quality positively.
Intrinsic quality cues impose a substantial influence on consumers’ perceived product quality and their final purchasing decision (Alonso, Paquin, and Mangin 2002). Among fruits, for instance, the product color is positively correlated with an increased consumption level of fruits such as cactus pears (Migliore et al. 2015). However, when it comes to food in general, the influence of intrinsic product characteristics, such as product appearance, on perceived product quality has largely been neglected by research (Symmank 2019); according to our research, this also seems to apply to fruits. Nonetheless, we assume a positive relationship between intrinsic quality cues and perceived food product quality to be present as it fits well with an intuitive understanding of how consumers build food product quality perception.
Credence quality attributes are of particular relevance in the context of NHLFPs, as they describe the luxury dimension that differentiates this product category most strongly from traditional luxury food products. Here, environmental friendliness and health benefits have been identified as important credence attributes for influencing NHLFP quality perceptions (Wiedenroth and Otter 2021b). Both, health benefits (Grunert 2005) and environmental friendliness (Sörqvist et al. 2013), have been found to influence the overall quality perception of other food products positively.
Experience quality attributes of food products, such as their freshness and taste, are important quality determinants of the final consumer (Luning, Marcelis, and Jongen 2002). In particular, the relationship between taste and improved food quality perception has been well established and is likely to also extend to the broader fruit segment (Stiletto and Trestini 2021). Other attributes, such as the influence of products’ texture on quality perceptions, have not been as well documented but have also been found to influence food product quality perceptions positively (Symmank 2019). As an example, Bakke and Vickers (2011) reported that the roughness of bread influences quality perceptions positively. Similar observations have been made by Alonso, Paquin, and Mangin (2002) for fruits.
H7a
A positive perception of extrinsic quality cues enhances the overall food quality perception.
H7b
A positive perception of intrinsic quality cues enhances the overall food quality perception.
H7c
A positive perception of credence quality attributes enhances the overall food quality perception.
H7d
A positive perception of experience quality attributes enhances the overall food quality perception.