The Role of Information Availability on Consumer Decision Making
Over the past decades, there has been a major development in providing food product information to consumers at the purchase level.
Why FOP is important?
Front-of-Package (FOP) information is significant to consumers because it allows them to be informed immediately what the product contains with the possibility to compare different products based on price, product ingredients, and whether the product is healthy and sustainable.
What should be considered?
- There should be a policy to provide a clear and standardized labeling system across food products;
- There is a need to investigate how society will engage with future technology.
Nowadays, consumers are willing to better understand the content of the products they are purchasing. Product information exists in different types and formats, such as Front-of-Package, Side and Back-Package, playing a pivotal role in consumer decision-making. Front-of-Package (FOP) nutrition labeling, a relatively new format, informs consumers of all necessary information. They provide consumers with ‘at-a-glance’ information, including price, brand name, percentage of Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) including energy intake, total fat, saturates, sugar and salt as well as Traffic Light (TL) color coding in high (red), medium (amber) and low (green) and social/environmental labels such as fair trade and animal welfare. FOP assists consumers in decision-making to choose proper food and encourages them to eat healthy; therefore, it has tremendous impacts on consumers’ decisions and lifestyles (Alizon et al., 2011).
As Grunert & Wills (2007), quoted that nutritional labeling is interesting for many reasons, e.g “it supports the goal of healthy eating while retaining consumer freedom of choice, and it reduces information search costs for consumers, which should make it more likely that the information provided is being used”.
In addition, it assists them to compare different products by comparing their FOP and deciding which one to purchase in their real-life shopping (Alizon et al., 2011).
Yet, today’s busy lives of consumers make searching and comparing different products to find what they want becomes difficult while shopping in-store. In particular, according to Alizon et al (2011), FOP information is sometimes provided in multiple label formats for similar products, confusing consumers when shopping and wasting time comparing products and information. For instance, one product includes GDA and TL, but a similar product by another brand includes only GDA information. Apart from this, global issues such as climate change are significant to consider for FOP information, use labeling such as fair trade to make it clear to consumers that the product has a low level of negative impact to the environment.
What is happening now to overcome the issue?
Governments around the globe are investigating ways to implement cost-effective strategies and provide information availability of food products online. Recent developments in technology have a resurgence of interest in online shopping and digital marketing, encouraging governments to complement FOP information with online information.
The benefit of online grocery
Digital marketing and online grocery provide online information about food products in a variety of ways, such as using the search option, accessing special offers and categories of products as well as reviewing people’s comments about a particular product, all of which allow consumers to quickly and easily access information and decide whether to buy a product. Especially, comparing products through searching on many search engines will help consumers find the desired product in the most effective way that traditional shopping at supermarkets will be difficult and time-consuming. There are many websites and apps that help consumers quickly compare two or even more products on their FOP information. Notably, consumers with busy lives will benefit the most.
Online shopping and consumer behavior
Providing information online can influence consumer behavior by clarifying the content of nutrition fact labels. For instance, disclosing high levels of trans-fat will decrease purchases as consumers shift to the healthiest products (i.e., 90% fat-free). Clear and understandable electronic disclosure plays an important role in consumer decisions (Thaler and Tucker., 2013).
In addition, information availability can have an enormous impact on consumers’ lifestyles. Because they can search for products that are closer to their current lifestyle and behavior. For instance, recently there has been a strong interest in sustainable consumption and information regarding environmental awareness and social issues such as fair trade, FSC, organic production, animal welfare, recycling, country of origin and genetically-modified information (Kim et al., 2001).
United Nation claimed that “sustainable consumption promotes social and economic development by addressing economic growth and environmental degradation through improving efficiency and sustainability in the use of recourses” (United Nations Sustainable Development, 2019).
Research shows that the majority of consumers attach great importance to sustainable labeling.
The question is, are all these labeling clear and understandable to consumers?
According to the Food Information Council (Food and Health Survey, 2019), more than half of consumers want to purchase sustainable products, but more than 60% still wonder if the food is sustainable. They don’t know if sustainability means less waste, less energy consumption, fewer pesticides use, etc.
Hence, manufacturers, producers, suppliers and third parties must provide clear information in this regard. One solution is to educate people through their websites and social media to clarify all definitions of sustainable logos.
Information availability and eating pattern
Information availability can lead to a healthy eating pattern in which consumers prefer to buy products that are low in fat, sugar or salt. Studies show that the information available on nutrition labeling changes consumers’ purchasing habits. Wills et al. (2009), stated that for the majority of European consumers, the use of nutrition labels is an important issue and that they are more interested in labeling on the front pack of the product because they find that it is easier and more user and reference-friendly. According to Schupp et al. (1998) and Crutchfield et al. (2001), nutrition labels and information on GDA and TL in meat products encourage consumers to buy low-fat meat. Mattios (1998), noted that consumers prefer to buy cooking oils with higher saturated fat and less monounsaturated fat. In addition, Harris et al. (2011) indicated that FOP is significant for parents who want to buy cereals for their children and Azman & Sahak (2014), clarified that FOP affects consumers’ purchasing decisions that the one who followed a healthy lifestyle used the label as a source of useful information.
Social networking and sharing opinions
On the other hand, easy access to product information over the internet creates an interconnected world and links consumers with each other so that they can share their thoughts on a specific product by leaving comments on the websites, helping others to review them and make a decision. Therefore, their decision-making will be more efficient as they can get extra information about the product.
However, the simplicity of the information plays an important role in consumer decision-making and the FOP should provide all the necessary information and make it clear and understandable. For example, all food producers should follow one labeling format and use a consistent labeling system. Using common interpretative factors for FOP information avoids confusion for consumers and supports them to compare different products in less amount of time. Grunert & Wills (2007) examined the information availability of a product in supermarkets in five countries (Sweden, Germany, France, Poland, and Hungary) and found out 88% of consumers purchase products by only looking at the FOP information. Therefore, providing clear and simple information is a crucial issue to consider.
Social engagement with the technology
Further work should concentrate on understanding society’s engagement with future technology and changes in their behavior. Benn et al. (2015), examined the information required to inform purchase decisions through online shopping for forty participants in the UK and presented that product image is very important for most of the participants, as it provides suitable information at a glance. He stated that some consumers will only view information if they like a product photo. Also, environmental and social issues play a pivotal role in consumer decision-making. For instance, consumers preferred to buy a local product or the product which considers animal welfare. In addition, the participants had different views on online shopping. Some of them think that even if they save a lot of time, it will still take a long time to find the best offer. On the other hand, others have difficulty buying fresh items because they want to try the product (i.e. fruit) before buying. But other participants, who are specifically employed consumers, think that shopping online is useful and profitable. An important issue that emerges from these conclusions is that the availability of information must be clear and follow a similar standard for all food products.
Sustainability
Another significant finding of this study concerns sustainable and circular consumption. This type of consumption arises from the global issues we are facing recently such as the increase in waste that encourages consumers to consume sustainably with less damage to the environment, society and economy. Consequently, providing obvious FOP information will support so-called “green consumers” and encourage others to choose sustainable products with labels such as fair trade and organic.
Solutions and suggestions
Therefore, FOP details disclosing (i.e., clear product images, GDA and TL) and price are greatly critical in the purchase. On the other hand, providing transparent information on sustainability is essential due to the importance of social and environmental issues such as climate change and increasing waste.
Hence, this study proposes that suppliers and manufacturers should create a user-friendly FOP information and standardized system for food products, providing useful education as well as monitoring and analyzing society’s tendency to the future technology regarding online shopping.
