Japanese consumer preferences for additive-free wine labeling

Satoko Kubota,Hiroichi Kono,Hirotsugu Sawano

doi:10.1186/s40100-017-0073-1

Satoko Kubota, Hiroichi Kono + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40100-017-0073-1

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Abstract

Consumers have recently become more concerned about food additives and food safety. Since its first meeting on September 17, 2003, the Risk Communication Expert Committee has studied and discussed the ideal methods to communicate risk related to food safety issues in response to a Food Safety Commission request. However, there are only a few case studies that actually apply to risk communications. This study aims to analyze consumer preferences for antioxidant-free wine and suggest a tool for risk communications. The study uses a two-stage method: in the first, the analysis identified different types of consumers according to their views of antioxidant-free labels using structural equation model (SEM) analysis; the second stage incorporated the consumer attributes identified by the SEM into a conjoint analysis to calculate willingness to pay (WTP) for each attribute. The WTP results show that the antioxidant-free label has a significant influence on consumer preferences. Notably, consumers who recognize food additive dangers placed significant additional value on wine without antioxidants. On the other hand, consumers who have knowledge of wine and food processing tended to view antioxidant-free wine as low in quality compared to wines made with the original manufacturing process. These results indicate that “adverse selection” has occurred in the wine market in Japan. The results suggest significant differences between consumer groups in terms of awareness of the dangers of food additives and knowledge of wine and food processing. This implies that some consumers are sensitive to food additives. Our research can help regulators create effective means to communication risk related to food additives. In addition, this implies that government guidelines related to wine labels are important, so that Japanese wine may approach international level quality.

Highlights

In recent years, it has become increasingly common to see publications, news reports, and advertisements, emphasizing the “dangers” of food additives
If we look at the interactions between each wine label and consumer attribute, both M*T and M*D were significant and positive, indicating that there is a high likelihood that consumers who are aware of the dangers of food additives and consumers who readily conform to others will select wines with antioxidant-free labels
The maximum prices that the consumers, who are aware of the dangers of food additives and tend toward conformity, were willing to pay were JPY628 and JPY403 for antioxidant-free labeled wine, respectively

Summary

Introduction

It has become increasingly common to see publications, news reports, and advertisements, emphasizing the “dangers” of food additives Many of these ignore dose-response relationships and give the mistaken impression that additives have the same toxicity at low concentrations below maximum allowable standards as they do if ingested in high quantities. The findings indicate that consumers respond excessively to “no cholesterol” labels, which have no practical meaning for vegetable oil. These and other similar results indicate that consumers do not adequately understand the information that manufacturers provide that is intended to reassure consumers of the safety of their products. This suggests that government efforts to establish guidelines for food product labels are a useful strategy to deal with the overwhelming flood of information that consumers face

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