Exploring the Impact of Food Labels on Consumer Purchasing Decisions: A Study on Awareness and Preferences

Food labels are an excellent avenue of communication. The food package has assumed the responsibility of communicating relevant information that consumers need to know about the product. The objectives of this study was to understand the impact of food labels on consumer purchasing decisions and also to understand the impact of Demographic variables on awareness and Preference level about Food labels among women consumer in Mysore urban. A total of 200 Housewives between age group of 25-45 years from the residential areas of Mysore Urban and who gave consent to participate in the study were included. The research was based on survey using standardized questionnaire and personal interview. The results showed that 33 percent of the respondents were graduates and 63.5 percent were housewives. The awareness about food labels and the attitude of reading labels was studied and the results were encouraging to note that the entire respondent practiced to read the label information. 70-74 percent of the respondents believed that the label information ascertained the safety of the food for used. There was a positive correlation between the Respondents’ score and preference score towards food labels and consumer purchasing decisions. It was evident that demographic profile of the consumers has an impact on the awareness of food label and consumer purchasing decision. It was found (Table 4) that subjects Awareness score positively correlated with attitude score towards food labels (r = 0.7825) and similarly Awareness score was also positively correlated with Preference of the same (r = 0.9704). The results also showed that Attitude and Preference for making purchasing decision had a significant correlation with each other (r= 0.8913). It can be concluded that many demographic factors such as age, occupation, family income and food habits had impact on decision making for purchasing the food products. This results of the present study highlight the needs to improve food labeling, provide education to consumers to raise their awareness on importance of reading and use of food labeling information to make an informed choice of the food.