The Role of Plant Brands in Consumer Quality Perceptions of Herb and Vegetable Transplants

Our research question was whether (or not) consumers would perceive branded plants to be of higher quality than unbranded plants. In our survey, we showed subjects images of two vegetable (tomato, pepper) and two herb (basil, parsley) transplants and collected survey data at one Michigan location using eye-tracking equipment. The survey contained questions about vegetable and herb consumption, past purchases, and demographics. Participants were recruited in May 2014 through Craigslist and an existing survey Listerv. Participants were shown images of plants in a 15-cm container. The containers were either green, white or yellw and were either left blank or randomly assigned one of three national brands. We recruited 75 participants but had useful data for 72. After informed consent was collected and subjects were paid a $25 incentive, the study began with the subjects answering the demographic questions. Next, half of the participants proceeded to the eye-tracking experiment with the other half responding to the remainder of the survey questions. The eye-tracking device was calibrated for each respondent then participants were asked to respond verbally to each image on the screen. The participants were asked to select the plant with the highest quality, or to tell us that all of the plants appeared to be relatively the same in terms of quality. Overall, the branded package had a powerful visual impact. The branded container had a faster attention grabbing power (lower time to first fixation) and longer retention power (greater total visit duration). We also saw that branded packaging held attention four times as long as unbranded, attesting to the attention holding power of the brand logo. With regard to quality perceptions, 60.1% said the plants were equal in quality. However, 11.8% said the unbranded plant was higher in quality while 28.1% reported one of the three national brands was higher quality. In conclusion, we found that a substantial segment (approximately one third of the sample) reported that branded plants were of higher quality compared to unbranded plants, even though the plants were identical.