Local news coverage helped encourage independent restaurants and shops to offer plant-based meat, according to research that examines a stage of product adoption often overlooked in consumer marketing.
The study, published online in Marketing Science on 14 August and highlighted by publisher INFORMS on 21 October, found that the response varied with the political composition of local communities and the source of the coverage.
Its evidence concerns Facebook posts and business announcements from 2015 to 2019. It does not establish how the plant-based food market is performing in 2026, or how much extra food customers bought.
A menu decision comes before a customer purchase
Boya Xu of Virginia Tech and Tong Guo and Daniel Yi Xu of Duke University studied how local information influenced businesses’ decisions to introduce products from companies including Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.
Their peer-reviewed paper uses businesses’ first public announcements as a measure of adoption. Its main county-level analysis covers 341 US counties over 20 quarters, concentrating on places with repeated observations of both adoption and news coverage.
The authors collected 28,915 product-related posts with traceable locations. Of these, 13,344 came from local stand-alone businesses. Those are posts, including repeat promotions, rather than 13,344 different restaurants.
A product supplier needs an outlet to decide that offering an unfamiliar item is worthwhile before most customers can order it. News can provide information about that item and its prospects, but the business still has to decide whether it fits its customers and operations.
The estimated response differed between communities
In a county where about 30% of the population was classified as liberal, the researchers estimated that one additional locally sourced product-news item in a quarter increased the number of new business adopters that quarter by 0.86%. At a liberal population share of 50%, the estimated increase was 1.95%.
These are relative changes in the number of new adopters, not percentage-point increases in market share. They are also not forecasts that a particular newspaper story will bring a supplier a fixed number of orders.
The authors found that the role of different news sources changed as the category developed. Grassroots sources were influential earlier, while organisational media became more relevant later.
For a manufacturer planning a launch, the findings suggest that the source and local relevance of information can deserve attention alongside its audience size. They do not show that a national campaign can be replaced by a certain number of local articles.
The research separates publicity from existing demand
Popular products attract coverage, making it difficult to establish whether news encourages adoption or simply follows it.
The researchers addressed this by combining local food-news topic preferences measured in 2014 with later nationwide changes in news topics. This statistical approach uses earlier editorial patterns to help predict subsequent local coverage, rather than relying only on the coverage observed alongside new offerings.
The approach depends on assumptions about how those earlier preferences relate to later demand. It was not a randomised trial assigning news stories to restaurants. Facebook announcements can also miss businesses that introduced products without posting about them.
Neither a first announcement nor a menu listing establishes lasting demand, profitable sales or a repeat order. The sample’s focus on stand-alone businesses and selected counties also limits how readily the estimates apply to chains or other markets.
Give the retailer a workable commercial proposition
Publicity cannot establish whether a product leaves enough money after ingredients, preparation, wastage and service costs. A supplier approaching a restaurant needs to explain pack sizes, storage requirements, preparation and replenishment as well as consumer appeal.
Our reporting on retailer margins and the adoption of new seed varieties examines a separate experiment showing how the intermediary’s incentives can affect what reaches customers. Its agricultural results do not measure food-service demand, but they illustrate why the distributor’s decision needs its own business case.
A useful launch record would follow outlets from inquiry to trial order, first menu listing and reorder. It would then connect those stages to the volume sold, waste and contribution after variable costs. Counting press mentions alone leaves most of that process unmeasured.
When testing a paid promotion, a comparable group without the campaign can help estimate what happened because of the spending. Our guide to measuring additional marketing sales explains why sales credited to a campaign can differ from sales it actually created.
Paid content also needs to be recognisable as commercial material. The US Federal Trade Commission’s native-advertising guidance explains the risk of promotions that appear to be independent editorial content. The study’s finding about news is not a reason to disguise an advertisement.
For a supplier, the practical test is whether information helps a suitable business try the product and then sell it successfully. A first listing is a useful milestone; sustained orders and acceptable margins establish whether the launch has become a viable part of the outlet’s business.
