'Meat' the Influencers: Crafting Authentic Endorsements that Drive Willingness to Buy Cultured Meat.

Cultured meat is a promising substitute for regular meat, but its introduction faces challenges and expected consumer resistance. While some studies investigate how communication strategies and advertising appeals can address these concerns, the role of social media influencers in promoting cultured adoption remains yet to be explored. Across two online experimental studies involving 752 participants recruited from Prolific, this research investigates how influencer type (micro- vs. mega-influencer) affects consumers' willingness to buy cultured meat. Study 1 reveals that consumers are more willing to buy cultured meat when it is endorsed by micro- rather than mega-influencers. Further, perceived endorsement authenticity mediates this effect such that micro-influencers endorsements are perceived as more authentic than those of mega-influencers. Study 2 demonstrates that these effects are moderated by influencer expertise and type of meat, where micro-influencers with health (but not fashion) expertise have a more pronounced impact on increasing willingness to purchase cultured meat (but not regular meat). This research provides theoretical insights into how consumers perceive influencer endorsements for cultured meat. These findings aim to enhance consumer acceptance of cultured meat while offering actionable guidance for practitioners on promoting cultured meat brands on social media.

Cultivating curiosity: Consumer responses to ethical and product benefits in cultured foods.

Cultured foods have the potential to profoundly transform the food industry. However, most current research focuses on cultured meat, neglecting other cultured products and begging the question of whether different promotional approaches are suited for certain types of cultured food products than others. To bridge this knowledge gap, we carried out two studies to explore how product type (cultured meat vs. cultured fruit) and benefit type (ethical vs. product attributes such as sensory and nutritional advantages) interact in determining consumers' willingness to try the products. Study 1 findings indicate that emphasizing ethical benefits is more effective for promoting cultured meat, whereas highlighting product benefits is more effective for promoting cultured fruit. We found that curiosity, a strong behavioral motivator, mediates the interactive effect of product type and benefit type on willingness to try. This research underscores the need for marketing messages to be tailored to the distinct cultured product types and enriches the literature on curiosity as an important mechanism in the context of cultured food acceptance.

Challenging cultured meat naturalness perceptions: The role of consumers' mindset.

Cultured meat, produced through in vitro cultivation of animal cells, has emerged as a promising solution to environmental, health, and ethical issues resulting from conventional meat production. However, acceptance remains a crucial challenge, significantly influenced by perceptions of unnaturalness. Previous research has demonstrated the limited success of messaging strategies aimed at countering these perceptions. Across two experimental studies, this research breaks new ground by examining these strategies through the lens of mindset theory-i.e., beliefs about the fixedness or malleability of human attributes. In Study 1, we present findings illustrating that a strategy challenging the importance of naturalness is effective at increasing cultured meat acceptance among consumers with a growth mindset. In Study 2, we demonstrate how complementing such messaging strategy with a specific form of creative narrative can make it effective among consumers with a fixed mindset too. Our findings are informative theoretically, extending mindset and narrative theories to the context of cultured meat and, practically, examining the effectiveness of different communication strategies in driving consumer acceptance of the product.