The role of consumers' health involvement on communication impact of food advertisements with health claims

Today, as a result of increasement in consumers' interests on healthy diet and life, marketers have begun to position their products differently, and food companies have presented products with health claims. The aim of this research is to assess participants, whose levels of involvement in health have been determined, about their attitudes towards three different types of claims on health in the advertisement they see, their recollections on the claim and their purchase intentions, within the frame of The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). Within the context of the research, it has been used the factorial design amongst the experimental research models, and later, quantitative data collection methods to achieve the particular goal. Data of the research shows that women, people aged 48 and above, people who are married and have children are more involved in health and their attitudes towards the claim on the advertisement are more positive. As the level of involvement in heatlh increases, buying intention decreases, and there is a positive relationship between the attitudes towards the claim and the purchase intentions of participants. According to the research, the participants who see the disease-risk-reducing claim show more success on recalling the claim of the advertisement. Based on the findings obtained from the research, it has been come to the inference that claims of advertisements should be prepared according to consistency between the claim and the visual content of the advertisement, accuracy of health claims and demographic features. Keywords: Health Involvement, Health Claim in Ads, Nutrition Claim in Ads, Disease Risk Reduction Claim in Ads, Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), Attitude, Purchase Intention, Recall