Thanks for sharing, Jacob. I have a questions about this. If a product is PTC competitive but isn’t culturally congruent (such as if tempeh were suddenly competitive in Nebraska), I agree with the idea that cultural factors would prevent people from adopting it. But does this idea also apply to products that are very similar substitutes? If a vegan hotdog is tastier and cheaper and more convenient, do you think that over the course of a decade or two most people would still buy the more expensive and less tasty option?
Maybe you are using competitive to mean “similar” and I am thinking of competitive as “better than”?
Do you have any rough guesses as to changes over time? I suppose that if a PTC competitive hamburger were introduced to the world tomorrow, plenty of people would still eat traditional hamburgers. But I also suspect that a massive number of people would eat the new product, and that over time adoption would increase.
Thanks for your question—forgive my quoting from the paper in response, I understand it’s quite lengthy! To your first question, I don’t think most interpretations of the PTC hypothesis would qualify tempeh as taste-equivalent (although, as I emphasize here, these factors aren’t very well defined).
I’ve included a case study on hot dogs specifically:
the home-goods-retailer-cum-cafeteria Ikea sells plant-based hotdogs that are equally or lower-priced, readily available alongside animal-based hot dogs, and “received a 95 percent approval rating” in taste testing in Sweden (Webber, 2019). In September 2019, Ikea’s plant-based hot dogs composed about 8% of annual hot dog sales globally (Southey, 2019).[4]
My rough guesses on changes over time:
Important alternatives to the PTC hypothesis might consider the role of future consumers rather than present-day consumers, who have been the focus of this paper. Future consumers might experience a large change in social norms or otherwise shift their preferences toward consuming plant-based rather than animal-based meats. This is a common feature of many animal advocacy theories of change (Delon et al., 2022), and advocates will potentially find it difficult to shift social norms in favor of plant-based meat.
Thanks for sharing, Jacob. I have a questions about this. If a product is PTC competitive but isn’t culturally congruent (such as if tempeh were suddenly competitive in Nebraska), I agree with the idea that cultural factors would prevent people from adopting it. But does this idea also apply to products that are very similar substitutes? If a vegan hotdog is tastier and cheaper and more convenient, do you think that over the course of a decade or two most people would still buy the more expensive and less tasty option?
Maybe you are using competitive to mean “similar” and I am thinking of competitive as “better than”?
Do you have any rough guesses as to changes over time? I suppose that if a PTC competitive hamburger were introduced to the world tomorrow, plenty of people would still eat traditional hamburgers. But I also suspect that a massive number of people would eat the new product, and that over time adoption would increase.
Thanks for your question—forgive my quoting from the paper in response, I understand it’s quite lengthy! To your first question, I don’t think most interpretations of the PTC hypothesis would qualify tempeh as taste-equivalent (although, as I emphasize here, these factors aren’t very well defined).
I’ve included a case study on hot dogs specifically:
My rough guesses on changes over time:
Happy to answer follow-ups :)