Therapeutic Research

Abstract

Purpose：Our previous study in 2021＊ found that there were safety hazards for health foods promoted for pregnancy purposes, as well as related problems between sellers and consumers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to clarify the characteristics of catchphrases included on the enterprise homepages viewed by persons trying to conceive. 　　Methods：A keyword search of Yahoo! internet search engines, which have many Japanese consumers, was conducted from April 22, 2022 to April 29, 2022. The keywords were“ conception”,“ supplement”, and“ ranking”, and the top five advertising information sites（organizing the ranking of supplements）were adopted. Catchphrases（CFs：key phrases used for public relations）about the concepts of company products in each ranking were extracted. If there were similar phrases, they were combined. After data cleaning the phrases, quantitative text analysis was performed. The decomposition from text data into words was performed by computer programs, which decomposed the CFs into meaningful minimum units and determined parts of speech. 　　In addition, co‒occurrence network analysis was performed on the high ranking, frequently spoken words. This analysis method groups and illustrates a group of words from their simultaneous appearance（co‒happening）in relation to the extracted word. Furthermore, categorization was performed based on the groups identified by co‒occurrence network analysis, and a category was interpreted and named while checking the CF itself and centering on the co‒occurrence words. The Jaccard coefficient（setting over 0.2）was performed to determine the relevance of each occurrence pattern of the word. The KH Coder 3 was used for analysis. Results：Thirty‒four products were extracted from 33 companies. The number of sentences contained in the text data used in the analysis was 487, and the total number of extracted words was 4,957, of which 1,127 were different types of words“. Pregnancy” was the most frequent word（72 occurrences）, followed by“ folic acid”（54 occurrences）. Six categories were obtained from the co‒occurrence network analysis and named as follows：“ Folic acid is rich in other ingredients”,“ Support for women who wish to become pregnant or are pregnant”,“ Health of babies and moms”,“ Recommended by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare”,“ Effectiveness of monoglutamic acid type”, and “Commitment to safety”. In public relations, the words in each CF are message‒oriented, and if six or more categories are included, pregnant women see it as compelling and attractive information, which encourages them to imagine a bright future. Additionally, it can mislead them into thinking they can get pregnant. 　　Conclusion：Consumer education is needed to enable consumers to accurately understand and interpret CF in order to prevent the misconception that supplements can lead to pregnancy. ＊Kamioka H, Wada Y, et al. Health problems and conflicts related to claimed“Health Foods”for individuals trying to conceive in Japan. Therapeutic Research 2021；42：559‒571