How Does Dietarian Identity Influence Purchase Intention and Consumer Trust?

Consumers’ perception of the impact of their consumption choices on the environment, health, and animal welfare leads them to change their habits. They adopt distinct dietarian identities, which influence their attitudes and behavior. Accordingly, companies seek to adapt their offerings to include vegetarian and vegan products. Nevertheless, their success depends upon their ability to target relevant consumer segments. Since identity plays a role in the choice of ethical products, this paper explores consumers’ different dietarian identities around the consumption of vegan and vegetarian products. Besides, it investigates the relationships between these distinct dietarian identities, purchase intention, and consumer trust. Currently, this paper presents the conceptual part of an in-progress study. Hence, it comprises a review of the literature on dietarian identity, consumer trust, and purchase intention. Besides, it presents the expected contributions and implications of the study. As a next step, we aim to apply the Dietarian Identity Questionnaire to an online consumer sample and segment them according to their distinct dietarian identities. Then, we shall assess their levels of consumer trust and purchase intention. Hopefully, our study will contribute to understanding the distinct dietarian identities around vegan food. Besides, managerial recommendations will be made on the creation of better-segmented communication and marketing strategies by companies and public authorities.