To address the growing health awareness of consumers, the food industry designs novel food alternatives, which are similar but not identical to existing foods (e.g., meat-reduced or plant-based burgers). The idea is that consumers can continue to eat their preferred kind of food and still follow a healthy diet. However, we argue that it is too short-sighted to hope that positive similarities to existing products help to increase purchase intentions, because consumers often focus on distinct attributes of new products and neglect the positive attributes shared by existing and novel food alternatives. We tested our hypotheses in six studies in which participants provided or received attributes for classic food products and novel alternatives with substituted ingredients to make them healthier. We observed that consumers perceive the distinguishing attributes between a classic product and its novel, healthier alternative to be predominantly negative, whereas they perceive most shared attributes to be positive. Moreover, we found the predicted neglect of shared attributes in the formation of taste expectations and purchase intentions. In the conclusion, we put forward that the observed evaluation bias can impede the success of novel food alternatives and discuss possible ways to overcome this disadvantage.

中文翻译：

---

差异化原则：为什么消费者经常忽视新食品的积极属性

为了满足消费者日益增长的健康意识，食品行业设计了与现有食品相似但不完全相同的新型食品替代品（例如，少肉或植物性汉堡）。这个想法是消费者可以继续吃他们喜欢的食物，并且仍然遵循健康的饮食习惯。然而，我们认为，希望与现有产品的积极相似性有助于增加购买意愿是太短视了，因为消费者往往关注新产品的独特属性，而忽视现有和新型食品替代品所共有的积极属性。我们在六项研究中测试了我们的假设，在这些研究中，参与者提供或接受了经典食品和具有替代成分的新型替代品的属性，以使它们更健康。我们观察到，消费者认为经典产品与其新颖、更健康的替代品之间的区别属性主要是负面的，而他们认为大多数共同属性是正面的。此外，我们发现在口味期望和购买意愿的形成过程中，对共享属性的预测忽视。在结论中，我们提出观察到的评估偏差会阻碍新食品替代品的成功，并讨论克服这一缺点的可能方法。