Food labels play important third-party roles in the food marketing system through their impact on product design, advertising, consumer confidence in food quality, and consumer education on diet and health. However, current analysis focuses overwhelmingly on the label's direct use as a point-of-purchase shopping aid, even though such use is limited by consumers' information processing abilities and time. In rewriting label regulations, policy makers should consider the benefits and costs of the broad array of roles labels serve, with evaluation of alternative regimes based on their impacts on consumer behavior and seller strategy.

In order to design the most useful instruments of consumer protection, it is necessary to understand how consumers perceive and use such instruments. Often, basic consumer rights are considered more extensively in the design of consumer protection policies than basic patterns of consumer behavior and motivation. We are more likely to make information on labels complete as viewed by the expert than useful in the normal behavior of the consumer. This study is devoted to discovering how consumers perceive nutritional labels on food products. It draws conclusions about their meaning and usefulness to consumers.

No abstract

No abstract