The interplay between health claims and sensory attributes in determining consumers’ purchase intentions for extra virgin olive oil

A large body of literature has supported the idea that both food-intrinsic sensory attributes (e.g., taste, aroma, etc.) and food-extrinsic attributes (e.g., origin, health claims etc.) play a crucial role in consumers’ purchase intentions. However, it is still uncertain how the presence of health claims in the era of high prevalence of diseases and viruses (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) might impact sensory attributes, and therefore shape consumers’ purchase intentions. Thus, the aim of the study is to (i) investigate the impact of health claims presented to the consumers along with the sensory attributes on their purchasing intentions, and (ii) examine to what extent sensory attributes mediate the relationship between the presence of health claims and consumers’ purchasing intentions. For that purpose, sensory analysis of a healthy food product (extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)) was conducted to examine consumers’ interest in health claims in two scenarios: an informed scenario without health claims (n = 102) and an informed scenario with health claims (n = 105). The findings from a Structural Equation Model using STATA software suggest that the presence of health claims positively affects purchase intentions for EVOO. The sensory attributes taste and aftertaste partially mediate the relationship between the presence of health claims and consumers’ purchasing intentions. Furthermore, consumers rated the sensory attributes higher in the presence of health claims. Therefore, the food industry should focus on ways to improve consumers’ sensory and health perspectives by producing not only healthier food products with health claims but also tastier products than the ones available in the market. Moreover, food companies and marketers can make health claims more effective by targeting consumers’ preferences and developing marketing campaigns using claims that are essential for promoting extra-virgin olive oil.