Analysis of Malaysian consumers’ awareness on probiotics in fresh milk and its nutritional health

Abstract

In a developing country like Malaysia, consumers tend to be concerned about healthy products as it enhances the functional and health benefits of consumers. Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) plays an important role in giving nutritional health to fresh milk products as it contains probiotic strains. Examples of probiotic bacteria include Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium bifidum, and Lactobacillus rhamnosus. Currently, fresh milk product demand is increasing in the market, the consumers need to be aware of the existence of probiotics in fresh milk products as well as their beneficial impacts. Thus, an analysis is required to understand consumers’ knowledge about probiotics and their perception towards fresh milk products. The data was investigated among randomly selected 170 consumers in Malaysia. A structured online questionnaire was distributed through social media and conducted via google form as a part of data collection. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS software. Descriptive analysis and Chi-square test were used to identify the significant differences with a p-value of < 0.05 between sociodemographic profiles with awareness, knowledge and perceptions towards probiotics and fresh milk. The findings showed that more than 80% of consumers in Malaysia have higher awareness, knowledge and positive perceptions toward probiotics in fresh milk.