Consumers frequently evaluate the healthfulness of packaged foods based on multiple on-pack cues presented simultaneously. While prior research has extensively examined individual signals such as nutrition labels or claims, less is known about how consumers integrate competing information and whether they rely on consistent or heterogeneous decision strategies. This study addresses this gap by investigating how different types of product-related cues jointly shape perceived healthfulness and by identifying distinct patterns of cue weighting across consumers. Using a mixed-methods design, we first conducted focus groups to explore how consumers conceptualize healthfulness in real-world evaluation contexts. Building on these insights, a full-profile conjoint experiment with a UK sample recruited by quota sampling on age and gender quantified trade-offs among four on-pack cues: ingredient composition, health-related claims, calorie information, and vitamin tables. At the aggregate level, ingredient-related information exerted the strongest influence, followed by claims and vitamin information, while calorie information played a more limited role. However, segmentation based on individual-level importance weights revealed three distinct health inference strategies: consumers primarily guided by ingredient simplicity, those anchored in energy-related information, and those relying on claim-based cues validated by nutrition tables. Accounting for these strategies substantially improved explanatory power, indicating that heterogeneity in healthfulness judgments is systematic rather than random. The findings contribute to research on consumer information processing by demonstrating that perceived healthfulness reflects distinct, strategy-based patterns of cue weighting rather than uniform cue effects and suggest the need for more nuanced approaches to food labeling and retail communication.
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