Healthy Food Products: Testing the Impact of Ad Type and Content Format on Consumers' Purchase Intention

The promotion of healthy food products through social media has increased significantly in recent years. While previous studies have examined the effect of Brand-Generated Content (BGC) and User- Generated Content (UGC) on purchase intention, little is known about the effectiveness of Employee- Generated Content (EGC). This study examined the extent to which ad type and content format influence consumers' purchase intention regarding high-protein food products. To examine this, a 3 × 2 between-subjects experiment was conducted among 207 participants, where each participant was randomly exposed to one of six fictitious social media posts. The results of a two-way ANOVA showed a significant main effect of ad type. However, no significant effect was found for content format, neither an interaction effect between the two independent variables, ad type and content format. These findings suggest that, for high protein food products, the source of the message plays a more significant role than the way the message is delivered. The study highlights the convincing power of EGC and offers practical guidance for companies operating in the healthy food industry. Furthermore, it provides a foundation for future research seeking to further examine the relationship between message source, message format, and consumer decision-making.