Consumers' food label behaviour: a preventive and interventive educational model for informed decision making

Abstract

Food labels are a good information source intended to aid consumers in informed decision making. Global financial problems necessitate consumers optimising their limited resources and optimally using available resources, such as food labels. Consumer socialisation is a process through which consumers can learn how to utilise food labels as a resource, resulting in positive food label behaviour changes. However, sometimes, consumer socialisation is lacking due to various role-players, and this results in barriers to informed decision making. These barriers include food label opinion-, use- and understanding-related barriers and food-label knowledge gaps. Consumer education can be implemented during consumer socialisation either as a prevention measure against barriers and gaps occurring during childhood, or as an intervention during adulthood to improve informed decision making. In order to propose an educational model in this regard, this study identified consumer socialization shortcomings, with specific reference to consumers' food label behaviour, consumers' food label opinion-, use- and understanding-related barriers and food-label knowledge gaps that require investigation. Therefore, this study's focus was to propose a food label educational model based on consumers' opinion-, use- and understanding-related barriers and food-label knowledge gaps. The overall methodology employed a quantitative design with face-to-face interviews and administrated questionnaires during the collection of five different data sets (2009-2013). The results indicate a general positive food label opinion, and a general disregard of the beneficial use of food label information. Persuasion knowledge gaps and a lack of shopping skill knowledge is evident. However, the results do not reveal convincing differences between young adults and older respondents' food label behaviour. Based on these results the researcher proposed an educational model. The model was built around three basic research questions, namely: who is responsible for or most capable to provide consumer education; why should consumers receive food label education; and what are the best methods or sources for food label education? The findings illustrate that despite the natural, ongoing consumer socialisation during adulthood, the shortcomings in food label consumer behaviour persist. Consequently, it is questionable as to whether or not the respondents had the ability to make informed decisions. It is recommended that this proposed educational model be tested and implemented in a preventative and interventive consumer educational initiative.