Do Sustainability Labels Reinforce Health Claims - And Vice Versa?

Abstract

Health has become a crucial advertising factor for food producers and retailers. Firms can now use health claims as effective tools to differentiate their products. However, several critical issues impact the efficiency of such health claims. In this study we investigate whether a co-labelling strategy might enhance the impact of health claims by combining the claim with a reinforcing element (“strong partner”), namely a sustainability label. The most common sustainability labels are the organic and the fair-trade label. Our findings show that combining a health claim with a sustainability label does indeed increase the credibility of the health claim, which then helps convey the product’s health message – although we find that this only applies to co-labelling with an organic label. At the same time, the organic label benefits from co-labelling with the health claim, and itself then becomes more credible.