Asymmetric Demand Patterns for Products with Added Nutritional Benefits and Products without Nutritional Benefits

This paper investigates consumers' demand patterns for products with nutritional benefits and products with no nutritional benefits across processed healthy and unhealthy foods. We integrate price changes (i.e. increases and decreases) into a demand model and quantify their relative impact on the quantity of food purchased. Firstly, we investigate how demand patterns vary across processed healthy and unhealthy products; secondly, we examine how demand patterns vary across nutrition-benefited products (NB) and non-nutrition-benefited products (NNB); and thirdly, we investigate how consumers respond to price increases and decreases for NB across processed healthy and unhealthy foods.