Health-related ad information and health motivation effects on product evaluations

This study tests the effect of health-related ad information on perceived product healthfulness and purchase intention. Also, the study investigates whether consumers' health motivation moderates the effects, because of the way health motivation affects processing of health-related information in ads. Three types of health-related ad elements are distinguished: functional claims, process claims and health imagery. These elements were combined in mock ads and an online experiment was run to test the study hypotheses. Results show that health imagery has the largest impact on consumers' product evaluations, while functional claims and process claims have much smaller effects. Health motivation shows significant interaction with process claims on product evaluations.