Does the advertising of plant-based burgers attract meat consumers? The influence of new product advertising on consumer responses

Abstract

The “meat” marketing of new plant-based burgers distinguished them from traditional vegan burgers, yet it is still unknown if and to what extent this advertising appeals to meat consumers. We employ a novel digital advertisement dataset from Nielsen Ad Intel to investigate the market entry and advertising patterns of the Impossible Burger, one of the leading brands in the plant-based meat market. By merging weekly ad views at the DMA market level with Nielsen Homescan Panel, we find that prior purchases of meat burgers reduce the likelihood of consumers buying the new plant-based burger, whereas past vegan burger purchases elevate this probability. While advertising did boost the average purchasing likelihood for the Impossible Burger, the enhancement in purchase probability for meat burger consumers is approximately one fifth of that observed for vegan burger consumers. These findings have implications to effectively marketing plant-based meat products to different consumer groups [EconLit Citations: D12, M37, M31, L66].