Food Labelling : An Important Aspect of Marketing

Abstract

Food labels are the first educational resource that customers come across while shopping, and they provide information about the product's ingredients, nutritional value, and allergen status. However, food labelling also functions as a marketing tool and may affect how customers perceive the quality of the food, which may in turn affect their dietary preferences. Because of this, research on food labelling is expanding, as is analysis of how it affects consumers, food producers, and the market. This is corroborated, for instance, by a wide range of publications that have been recently published with the aim of better examining how certain information on food packaging may affect food purchases, consumption, and, generally, dietary behaviour. A packaged product's prologue is its food label. The Nutrition Facts Panel (NFP), a crucial part, precisely provides the macro- and micronutrient amounts per 100g or one serving. It was discovered that although consumers read them, they do not change their buying habits as a result. Thus, the goal of this study is to discover the characteristics that prevent consumers from using food labels. Articles on the Indian population that were completed between 2013 and 2021 and published on PubMed, Research Gate, Google Scholar, and other independent Indian and international journals were evaluated. Reading and food purchases were influenced by a number of variables, including education, gender, income, and place of living. Knowledge of the purchasers was another important element that was discovered to be impeding the use of food labels.