Do Nutrition Claims Matter to Consumers? An Empirical Analysis Considering European Requirements

Abstract

EU Regulation 1924/2006 introduced a European legal framework for nutrition messages for food product labels. The study analyses consumer interest towards nutrition labelling and claims, and examines the information consumers consider important during their purchasing decisions, and the main characteristics of those consumers interested in nutrition claims and nutrition labelling use. A total of 1,025 northern Italian consumers were surveyed. We estimate one binary logit model to investigate the use of nutrition labelling, and seven other ordinal regression models to analyse consumer interest towards nutrition claims and labelling. Consumers who use nutrition labelling have characteristics different from those who use nutrition claims. Consumers using nutrition labelling show a marked interest in food safety concerns, use experts as their source of information and have specific dietary habits. For consumers concerned about nutrition claims, the survey shows significant links with attributes influencing purchasing behaviour, such as price, brand, certification, etc. Socio-demographic characteristics are statistically significant and show a positive link with age, gender and a negative linkage with income. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 The Agricultural Economics Society.

Consumption patterns and labelling of fish and fishery products in Poland after the EU accession

“…Barreiro-Hurle, Gracia, and de-Magistris (2010) demonstrated that the use of nutrition information influenced consumers' choice of healthier food products, although different types of label information were used by different types of consumers. Also Stranieri, Baldi, and Banterle (2010) showed that the characteristics of consumers who use nutrition label information (e.g. higher interest in food safety, specific dietary habits and higher age) differ from those who don't use such information.…”

Consumer willingness to pay a premium for a functional food in Ghana

“…Consumer WTP is expected to increase as income of the consumer increases (Teratanavat and Hooker, 2006;Liu et al 2009) due to negative correlation between consumer WTP for food safety and marginal utility of money. In contrast, Stranieri et al (2010) found a negative relationship between consumers' income and their nutritional claims, the possible reason been that the time pressure of high-income consumers tend to affect their information use on nutrition labels. This therefore makes the effect of income on consumer WTP inclusive in the empirical literature.…”

“…The ϕ's assume a standard normal distribution (Greene, 2008 (Barrena and Sanchez, 2010;Stranieri et al 2010). Liu et al (2009) posit that after the consumer's age has increased beyond a certain threshold, the WTP tends to decrease with age.…”

“…Liu et al (2009) posit that after the consumer's age has increased beyond a certain threshold, the WTP tends to decrease with age. Females are expected to pay higher premiums for foods with high nutritional and health claims (Stranieri et al 2010;Cranfield et al 2011). Married consumers are expected to pay higher premiums for functional foods since they may have younger children and family members who are ill and living with them (Annunziata and Vecchio, 2011).…”

Does nutritional labeling increase healthy eating fallacy? An exploration into young Indian’s purchase behavior

“…However, such changes in perceived healthiness were not likely to persuade food choice and eating. Stranieri et al (2010) examined the buyer's interest towards nutrition labeling, nutritional claims, the information consumers believed to be essential during their purchasing choices and the core uniqueness of those consumers interested in nutrition claims and nutrition labeling use. The results showed that nutrition labeling was a vital tool for product choice.…”