Do Claims About Sustainability or Animal Welfare Really Matter to Consumers When Choosing Dairy and Meat Products?

What do you think about factors like price, product freshness, and taste? Here's a very interesting study in this regard, published by DairyReporter.

Part of a European Research

These and many other product features were presented to a group of over 3,000 European consumers to rank from most to least important.

Participants were also asked about their opinions on new packaging solutions, such as QR codes, for providing additional product information, and whether they found sustainability labels useful when making a purchase.

The survey was conducted as part of research covering five European countries, aiming to identify the key factors influencing consumer purchases of meat and dairy products.

Researchers from the Agroscope research center in Switzerland, alongside academic staff from the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, and the Czech Republic, collaborated to collect and analyze consumer perception data from each country, comparing separate datasets to provide "important new insights into intercultural research and the link between theoretical perspectives and practical implications."

For the survey, a nationally representative sample of 3,178 consumers from the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain, and Switzerland were asked to evaluate 18 product attributes – from freshness, taste, and price to animal welfare and sustainability – in order of their importance as drivers for meat and dairy purchases.

Respondents were also asked whether sustainability labels are helpful when navigating label claims and if labeling solutions, such as QR codes, were an effective way to access additional information.

Animal Welfare Trumps Sustainability

Across all five markets, freshness was rated as the top product feature for dairy products. Quality/taste and animal welfare followed, with nutrition and price also considered important. However, sustainability attributes such as organic, carbon footprint, food miles, and sustainable packaging appeared to be of less importance.

The 18 product attributes in order of importance for dairy purchases were ranked as follows:

1. Freshness
2. Quality and taste
3. Animal welfare
4. Eating healthy
5. Nutrition
6. Free-range
7. Price
8. Local product
9. Fair trade
10. Processing
11. Grass-fed
12. Sustainable packaging
13. Expiry date
14. Special offers
15. Carbon footprint
16. Convenience of use
17. Familiarity or brand
18. Organic

The main product attributes for meat were similar, with freshness, quality/taste, and animal welfare forming the top 3, while sustainability claims such as organic, carbon footprint, and food miles ranked lower overall (refer to Sources below for more information).

Analyzing the results, researchers noted that "organic" ranked last for both meat and dairy. While suggesting it's the least important characteristic for consumers overall, "organic" still scored a relatively high average, indicating consumers still consider it an important attribute.

"A possible reason [for this ranking] is that organic production is associated with a range of different product attributes, such as environmentally friendly, healthy, expensive, or supportive for farmers," concluded the authors, adding that consumers may use labels as heuristics (quick mental shortcuts) without fully understanding them.

This could be due to the large number of organic labels

In 2022, the European Commission found 232 active organic labels in the EU, nearly half of which contained weak or unverified claims. In 2023, a pan-European study found an appetite for an international organic label for food products, with two-thirds of the 10,000 European consumers surveyed welcoming a single label.

Speaking with DairyReporter, Jeanine Ammann, one of the study's authors addressed in this article, said, "Consumers face the difficulty of making many decisions every day.

"When they go to a store, similarly, they have to make various purchasing decisions in a short time. That's why they rely on heuristics to make quick decisions, without needing to think about all available information and taking a long time. For labels, this means they need to be easily understandable for consumers.

"There are many labels available, and if consumers are not clear about what they actually mean, they won't spend much time finding out."

This could be why consumers indicated that the presence of links or QR codes on packaging was of least interest to them when it came to communicating product information, although these solutions were still considered important overall.

Similarly, the proliferation of food mentions may explain the lower ranking of production system attributes such as pasture-raised, local product, and fair trade, compared to the overall statement regarding "animal welfare."

However, there is no singular definition of animal welfare, and no statement made about a part of the production system and its relevance to welfare should be clearly stated and supported, said the authors.

The stakes are equally high as consumers seem to place greater importance on animal welfare, especially compared to sustainability-related attributes.

Regarding sustainability traits, consumers ranked "local product" as the most important product attribute for meat and dairy, behind sustainable packaging, food miles, and carbon footprint. This may be explained by consumers' tendency to associate local foods with being more sustainable based on existing research, the authors said.

Regarding whether consumers found sustainable labels generally helpful, most said they did, but the results varied by demographics and regions. For example, in the Czech Republic and Sweden, male consumers found such labels more useful than females, likely because female shoppers were already more open to buying sustainable goods.

But there are other factors at play determining purchasing decisions, apart from positive attitudes towards organic products, including policies and prices.

Are labels sufficient to drive consumer behavior change?

The debate over whether consumers are willing to buy sustainable goods has been ongoing for years, with CPG firms reporting a gap between what consumers say they would buy and what they end up purchasing.

A Eurobarometer survey in 2020 found that European consumers prioritized taste, food safety, and costs over both ethics and beliefs (e.g., animal welfare or fair trade) and environmental impact.

And here, "organic" was ranked lower than expected as a sustainable food-related feature. Since then, the EU has expressed its willingness to combat the proliferation of organic labeling, as reported by sister publication FoodNavigator Europe.

In the US, joint market research conducted by NielsenIQ and McKinsey analyzed consumer spending data over a five-year period to track the sales growth rate for products with environmental statements on packaging.

The research found that consumers were shifting their spending toward products with sustainable mentions in two-thirds of food categories, including cheese and yogurt.

"There is strong evidence that consumer sentiment expressed about ESG-related product claims translates, on average, into actual spending behavior," concluded the report, but cautioned that CPG companies should take a holistic approach in terms of both environmental and pricing to maximize growth.

In the academic study discussed here, the authors also theorized that linking sustainability attributes with other label claims – such as free-range and improved welfare – may further encourage consumers to buy that particular product.

Policy-driven measures could also lead to change, the authors said, adding that there is evidence from previous research that greater trust in governmental management of rural areas correlates with positive perceptions of locally produced foods and sustainable production practices.

And there are more tangible factors, such as prices, that can directly influence sustainable purchases of meat and dairy.

"I think labels are important because they can provide consumers with important information to make purchasing decisions (e.g., animal welfare)," Jeanine Ammann told us. "However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the labels currently available, making it difficult for consumers to keep an overview of what each label means.

"Different studies have found that price and taste are crucial for consumers when buying food. Therefore, price incentives can help change behavior towards more sustainable consumption."