The Interplay Between Advertising Claims and Product Categories in Food Advertising: A Schema Congruity Perspective

A series of studies involving 594 participants applies schema theory to explain the increasingly popular practice of using unmatched claims for food advertising. The findings are consistent with the schema congruity hypothesis that using health claims for vice products or taste claims for virtue products, each of which is perceived as moderately incongruent, leads to more favorable brand evaluations than using congruent or extremely incongruent claims. Findings suggest that advertisers take into consideration the goodness of food products regarding both long- and short-term benefits (i.e., virtue vs. vice) when designing advertising messages.