Food: choosing the right words to catch consumer attention

This article is also available in French: 

What is the best way to communicate about a new food product? How to decide the product positioning. Flavour? Health? How to develop a message that consumers will understand? Clémentine Hugol-Gential’s job at CIMEOS is to analyse the meaning of words and what they represent.

When developing a new food product, your marketing and communication teams are called upon to devise the product's positioning, target and the most relevant messages to appeal to consumers. Should we focus on the well-being aspect of the product or highlight how tasty it is? Should we emphasise the origin of the ingredients or innovative features? Can we combine all these messages in the same message without confusion? Do we need to address cultural differences at an international level? How do I make the right choices?

Developing the right message is complex and depends on many elements: positioning, choice of words, matching expectations with consumer culture…the list goes on. What is the solution?

Here are some ideas from Clémentine Hugol-Gential, lecturer at the University of Burgundy and member of academic staff at the CIMEOS research lab in Dijon.

Choosing the right words to reach consumers

One product, several practices and representations: coffee

Due to globalisation, messages used for food and food industry brands are becoming increasingly uniform. Yet every country and every culture has its own food practices and perceptions. Clémentine uses coffee - a ubiquitous feature of daily life - to illustrate the point. "There are a multitude of messages and consumer practices behind the simple word “coffee”. Long or short, black or white, just after a meal or never in the evening… there are as many coffee habits as there are coffee consumers". To understand what triggers collective imagination, CIMEOS, working with the SEB group, conducted a comparative study entitled "Practices, messages and representations of coffee in France and Germany".

The study was conducted in three stages:

• the creation of a corpus: the collection of words and expressions used by consumers in each country to describe coffee consumption
• corpus analysis to determine the most used words and their frequency
• cross-sectional analysis of the results to assess representations of coffee in each country and listing common and differentiating elements

What does the study tell us? Firstly, there are common elements between the two countries. Through the vocabulary they use, consumers highlight their quest for authenticity with terms like origin, tradition, virtue and ethics and by using terms like organic, natural and social.

But there are almost strident differences. Terms about authenticity are common to both countries, but terms used about ethics are different. For French consumers, the word organic is widespread, whereas the notion of ethics for Germans is much more complex and involves environmental, economic and social concepts.

People’s representations of the same food products differ to a high degree. How can brands decide how to communicate with their potential customers?

Understanding consumer representations

Qualitative methodology

It is always difficult to measure the impact of a message on its target. It is very challenging to gauge how sensitive individuals are to certain subjects and words. How can you choose the right words or develop a meaningful message that will touch as many people as possible?

Social sciences use qualitative methods. In contrast to quantitative methods, the qualitative approach explores the object more deeply. There are a range of techniques for using open questions and for exploring language. Individual interviews (structured, semi-structured and unstructured), and observing participants and focus groups are among the most common.

Interviews and focus groups are used to test messages on participants and gauge their reactions. Is the message perceived positively or negatively? Does it match people's perception of the subject?

Serious games

Serious games are another interesting method. Participants are put into a specific situation and their reactions to different messages are analysed. For example, the same product with different packaging and different messages is presented to participants. They are then asked why they chose which packaging. It is even possible to have participants actively play at developing new messages for food themselves.

The impact of words on consumer practices

The limitations of healthy messages: vegetables

Choosing and repeating a message is one thing, having an impact on consumer practice is another. CIMEOS researched the representations of vegetables in a carried out by a post-doctoral researcher for the company Bonduelle, titles "The image of legumes: circulation of narratives in the media space and disillusionment” (PhD thesis by Hélène Burzala, available here – in French).

Some messages have been repeated so frequently that they become engraved in our collective unconscious. "Eat 5 fruit and vegetables every day" is an example. Would you be surprised if we told you it has had no impact on fruit and vegetable consumption since it was released in 2001?

Clémentine explains: "The message for vegetables uses health and nutritional aspects at the expense of pleasure. It also reduces vegetables to simple functional ingredients.” This type of public health message leads to “food disillusionment”. It is not convincing for people attached to the French food model who advocate pleasure through flavour and local food identities.

Promoting tasty food that is good for you

How do you create desire in consumers? How can we inspire them to eat more healthy food? "Consumers are looking for purpose in their food. Choices are made based on a large number of criteria including authenticity, origin and farming practices,” explains Clémentine. Recent dietary trends such as increasing popularity in plant food, flexitarian habits and clean labels are proof of such.

Communication modes: beware of oversimplifications

Our current desire for immediacy means social media rules and is very influential. Sources are not always verified, but consumers generally trust them. They are indeed interesting channels for communicating, attracting consumers to your brand, and are capable of providing quick information in the event of a crisis, but messages tend to be short and over-simplified. Misperceived or misunderstood messages quickly turn into bad buzz. How we communicate the message is as important as the content of the message.

Yet social media, particularly Twitter for those who know how to decipher it, can be an excellent sounding board for consumer expectations and emerging consumer trends. CIMEOS created the COCKTAIL project, led by Gilles Brachotte, to study this source of information. The aim of the project is to highlight new food practices, new cultural trends, product diversion, consumer communities and how they interact. 

The project’s ultimate goal is to create a digital information platform for the general public and for the food industry (decision making, crisis management, brand image and new trends).

Keywords

Consumers, behaviour, messages, perceptions

Further reading

• Une ontologie de la culture de la vigne : des savoirs académiques aux savoirs d'expérience Clémentine Hugol-Gential, Marie Simon, Aurélie Bertaux, Ouassila Narsis, Rami Belkaroui, Amira Mouakher, Christophe Nicolle. Recherches en communication, Centre de recherche en communication, Université Catholique de Louvain, 2019. Lien : http://sites.uclouvain.be/rec/index.php/rec/article/viewArticle/11303
• De la responsabilité de santé à la responsabilité éthique : la légitimation de nouveaux experts alimentaires en France, le cas du légume, Clémentine Hugol-Gential, Sarah Bastien, Hélène Burzala-Ory, Audrey Noacco, Viviane Clavier ; Jean-Philippe De Oliveira. Alimentation et santé : logiques d'acteurs en information-communication, ISTE Editions, pp.77-96, 2018, 978-1-78405-516-15
• Pratiques, discours et représentation autour du café en France et en Allemagne, Clémentine Hugol-Gential, Anne Parizot, Mariette Sicard, Jean-Jacques Boutaud. Harmattan, collection questions alimentaires et gastronomiques. ECRITS ET DISCOURS CULINAIRES : QUAND LES MOTS SE METTENT A TABLE, pp.333-345, 2016
• Bien et bon à manger. Penser notre alimentation du quotidien à l’institution, Clémentine Hugol-Gential (Dir.), Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 2018.
• Se nourrir ou manger ? Les enjeux du repas en établissement de santé, Clémentine Hugol-Gential (Dir.), Préfacé par Stéphane Le Foll, Ministre de l’Agriculture de l’Agroalimentaire et de la Forêt. Postfacé par le Professeur Eric Fontaine, Président de la SFNEP. Edition l’Harmattan, collection questions alimentaires et gastronomiques, 2016.
• Les ateliers de cuisine : un outil thérapeutique pour le soin et le plaisir des patients, Clémentine Hugol-Gential, Marie Simon, Audrey Noacco, Christine Dorléan, Sophie Betting, Recherches en communication, Centre de recherche en communication, Université Catholique de Louvain, 2019. Lien : http://sites.uclouvain.be/rec/index.php/rec/article/view/11293