Key Success Factors in Health-related Food Marketing: A Case Study Approach

Every now and then, astonishing success stories can be observed on the food market. Many of the recent examples make reference to health characteristics and arguments. In order to analyse the possibly underlying success factors, an empirical case study approach was chosen. 27 successful European Union food marketing cases were purposively sampled from the database of renowned marketing effectiveness awards as well as following a series of food market expert interviews. Success factors were analyzed in a two-step approach, first for each case and then in a case-by-case comparison structured with a card sorting method. Six groups of success factors emerged from the analysis and named "data and knowledge", "emotions", "endorsement", "media", "community" and "why and how". Several success factors appeared to be of specific importance for the issue of health characteristics and arguments. It is concluded that considering the applicability of these case derived success factors might be a recommendable way of improving food marketing campaigns, especially when referencing to health in the communication.