Responses to different positioning strategies for unfamiliar food among food neophobics and neophilics

• Intention to try unfamiliar food depends on the positioning of the food.
• Product positioning effects are contingent on food unfamiliarity.
• Product positioning strategies effects are contingent on consumers’ food neophobia.
• For highly unfamiliar food, neophilic consumers prefer hedonic positioned food.

Considering the relevance of product positioning for a new food product on its potential acceptance by consumers, this paper reports the results of an experiment conducted to test how food neophobic and food neophilics react to different new food positioning strategies. Two unfamiliar foods were used to examine the impact of three different product positioning strategies that stressed (1) utilitarian benefits, (2) hedonic benefits, and (3) symbolic benefits. The study used a 3 × 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design (N = 180). The principal finding of the study is that for neophilic consumers, hedonic benefits seem to be significantly more attractive than utilitarian or symbolic benefits when the perceived level of unfamiliarity of the new food is high. For neophobic consumers, results provide partial evidence of more positive reactions to symbolic benefits compared to the other two benefits considered.