Objective: The US Food and Drug Administration and Institute of Medicine are currently investigating front-of-package (FOP) food labelling systems to provide sciencebased guidance to the food industry. The present paper reviews the literature on FOP labelling and supermarket shelf-labelling systems published or under review by February 2011 to inform current investigations and identify areas of future research. Design: A structured search was undertaken of research studies on consumer use, understanding of, preference for, perception of and behaviours relating to FOP/ shelf labelling published between January 2004 and February 2011. Results: Twenty-eight studies from a structured search met inclusion criteria. Reviewed studies examined consumer preferences, understanding and use of different labelling systems as well as label impact on purchasing patterns and industry product reformulation. Conclusions: The findings indicate that the Multiple Traffic Light system has most consistently helped consumers identify healthier products; however, additional research on different labelling systems' abilities to influence consumer behaviour is needed.

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Although most research on consumers’ choices, and resulting insights, have focused on choices that consumers make solely for themselves, consumers often make choices for others, and there is a growing literature examining such choices. Theoretically, how can this growing literature be integrated, and what gaps remain? Practically, why should marketers, consumers, and policy makers care when choices are made for others, and what should they do differently? A 2 × 2 framework of consumers’ choices for others addresses these questions. This framework has two fundamental dimensions: the chooser’s social focus (relationship vs. recipient oriented) and the chooser’s consideration of consumption preferences (highlight the recipient’s preferences vs. balance the recipient’s preferences with the chooser’s preferences). These dimensions generate four cells that represent prototypical choosing-for-others contexts: gift-giving (relationship focus, highlighting recipient’s preferences), joint consumption (relationship focus, balancing recipient’s and chooser’s preferences), everyday favors/pick-ups (recipient focus, highlighting recipient’s preferences), and caregiving (recipient focus, balancing recipient’s and chooser’s preferences). This framework captures most choosing-for-others situations, and each cell involves a distinct profile of motives, ultimately affecting choices. This framework integrates the choosing-for-others literature, which we hope will guide future research, and it also offers practical implications for marketers, consumers, and policy makers.

Many policy interventions that address rising obesity levels in the United States have been designed to provide consumers with more nutrition information, with the goal of encouraging consumers to decrease their caloric intake. We discuss existing information‐provision measures and suggest that they are likely to have little‐to‐modest impact on encouraging lower caloric intake, because making use of such information requires understanding and/or motivation, which many consumers lack, as well as self‐control, which is a limited resource. We highlight several phenomena from the behavioral economics literature (present‐biased preferences, visceral factors, and status quo bias) and explain how awareness of these behavioral phenomena can inform both more effective information‐provision policies and additional policies for regulating restaurants and public school cafeterias that move beyond information to nudge people towards healthier food choices.