What To Call Plant-Based Meat Alternatives- A Labeling Study (Faunalytics)

Background

Over the past few years, describing products as vegan has increasingly been considered a bad idea. For example, industry leaders have recommended that companies avoid using “v-words” on their meat-free products.

This perception is based on studies showing that, for instance:

Putting meat-free options in a separate “vegetarian” section of your menu reduces sales;
The word “vegan” reduces foods’ appeal for more consumers than other common labels like “diet,” “sugar-free,” or “gluten-free”.

The term “plant-based” has been widely adopted as an alternative to “vegan” and “vegetarian”. There are good theoretical reasons for this move: The term focuses on what a product contains rather than what it lacks, and it doesn’t have the baggage associated with veganism. However, not much research has examined the relative merits of the terms “plant-based” and “vegan.”

To our knowledge, Faunalytics’ current project is the first to rigorously compare these terms and others using validated scientific methodology and a nationally representative sample of consumers.

Project Overview

In this three-phase project, we started off by crowd-sourcing a list of potential terms for meat alternatives. We then narrowed the list of suggestions down to 20 and tested them for appeal with meat consumers. The terms included options like direct protein, harmless, and eco. We also included vegan and plant-based. In the third and final phase of this project, a large, nationally representative sample of participants made direct, head-to-head comparisons between the eight best performers from the second phase of the study.

Key Findings

The average person preferred the label vegan over plant-based (and most other options): Counter to commonly held assumptions, consumers said that a vegan burger sounded better than a plant-based burger in a head-to-head comparison. In fact, only feel-good outperformed vegan as a label.
All labels were rated similarly and neutrally on measures of sound and likelihood of purchase. In a head-to-head comparison, the term plant-based rated lower than all other descriptors we tested, including vegan. This study suggests that labeling a product simply as plant-based may appeal to a smaller segment of consumers than many other options, notably including vegan.
Feel-good was the most positively rated term. The success of this broadly positive label suggests playing up the ability of meat-free eating to make a person feel good. In a domain steeped with health and morality messaging, adding a broader, positivity-based approach may be successful with a large number of people.
To appeal to men, avoid vegan and plant-based. Products targeting men—especially young men—should avoid these standard terms. By contrast, the label direct protein showed more promise with men.
Older adults like zero cholesterol. Although it didn’t perform well across the full sample, zero cholesterol held significant appeal for older adults.
We need a range of strategies to appeal to a range of consumers. As the findings above suggest, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to labeling. For advocates, this means targeting your messages to specific groups. For marketers, as more companies manufacture animal product alternatives, they can target different niches.