The Importance Attached to Culinary Blogs in the Promotion of Food Products with Health and Nutrition Claims: A Perspective of Polish Processors and Distributors

The article aims to examine the importance attached to culinary blogs in the promotion of food products with health and nutrition claims from the perspective of food processors and distributors in Poland. With the use of the CAWI methodology, 78 completed questionnaires were obtained. We used correlations, t-statistics, ANOVAs, and simple and multiple regressions. A series of predictors of the importance attached to culinary blogs now and in the future were tested. As far as the current importance is concerned, we arrived at a model with three statistically significant independent variables: the importance of recommendations of scientific institutes on the food packaging, self-reported healthiness of one’s nutrition and the tenure of respondents in the examined companies. The importance is positively associated with the recommendations and healthiness, and negatively with tenure. Regarding the future forecasts, the expected importance of culinary blogs depends on the importance attached to health claims, expiry date, and price information on the label as well as on the role of the care for the environment in the marketing communication of the companies under study. All of these independent variables are positively associated with the predicted importance of culinary blogs. The increasing role of culinary blogs in the communication mix should trigger more investment of food processors and distributors in the commercial cooperation with bloggers.