Elsevier

Food Quality and Preference

Volume 21, Issue 8, December 2010, Pages 1042-1051
Food Quality and Preference

What determines consumer attention to nutrition labels?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2010.07.001Get rights and content

Abstract

To identify the key determinants of consumer attention to nutrition labels, visual search tasks (present –absent; one – two targets) were used as an effective experimental tool. The main manipulation concerned: set size (number of labels on front of pack); label characteristics (display size, position of the label on front-of-pack, colour scheme); and familiarity with type of the label and its location on the front of pack.

Attention capture was faster and more accurate when the label was present rather than absent, with doubled rather than standard display size, and with mono- rather than polychromatic colouring. There was performance benefit when the type of label and its location on the package did not change in two consecutive exposures, suggesting that nutrition logos should be printed in a consistent location on the package.

The results confirm our hypotheses that display size, colour scheme, familiarity with the label and its location on the front of the pack are key determinants of consumer attention to labels. These findings are crucial to better understanding consumer attention to labels and thus the impact of nutrition information on healthy food choice.

Introduction

Although a majority of consumers have a reasonable knowledge of nutrition and can use nutrition labels when prompted, only a minority seem to look at the nutrition labels when shopping (Black and Rayner, 1992, Grunert, 2008, Steenhuis et al., 2004). It thus seems that (lack of) attention may be an important bottleneck in the context of nutrition information on the product packaging (Van Trijp, 2009). Therefore, it is important to know what attracts consumers attention to nutrition labels, and whether these labels have any influence on consumer purchase decisions.

Current insight into consumers attention to nutrition information is limited because attention is a poorly defined phenomenon and the actual attention process is difficult to be measured. Many of the existing consumer studies are based on using self-report measures or think-aloud protocols while shopping (Cowburn and Stokley, 2005, Higginson et al., 2002, Kelly et al., 2009) which are likely to be poor and biased operationalisations of true attention processes. Also, conceptually, attention cannot be simply measured as a single “definite nervous path from stimulus to response” (Glimcher and Rustichini, 2004, Shadlen et al., 1996). This is because in the real in-store environment, the consumer is exposed to a great variety of labels, products and brands, all competing for the consumer’s attention. Thus, the key question becomes: what attracts consumer attention? And more specifically: what are the key determinants of consumer attention to nutrition labels?

To answer these questions, in the present study, we employ the visual search paradigm widely used in psychology and psychophysics (Bundesen, 1990, Duncan and Humphreys, 1989, Eriksen and Schultz, 1979, Estes and Taylor, 1964, Neisser, 1967, Sperling et al., 1971, Treisman and Gelade, 1980). Visual search tasks, largely unexplored in the research on nutrition labels, constitute an effective research paradigm to explore and quantify the determinants of bottom-up attention to nutrition labels without such assessments being affected by higher order information processing. The underlying assumption is that the search task is easier (i.e. faster response and fewer mistakes) if the information stands out, having a higher salience than other information stimuli on the packaging.

In the following, we first present a theoretical background on attentional processes and then provide the motivation for choosing the visual search paradigm as an effective experimental tool to explore the relative importance of determinants of attention to nutrition labels.

Section snippets

Theoretical background on attention to labels

Defining attention is not an easy task and scientists have been struggling with it for many years (Broadbent, 1958, James, 1950, Norman, 1968, Treisman, 1960, von Helmholtz, 1968). However, there is consensus that attention is a mechanism, or a set of mechanisms for selecting representations (Allport, 1987), which constitute the psychological and neural mechanisms that mediate perceptual selectivity (Yantis, 2000). Thus, we define attention as the psychological and neural mechanisms that

Method

In two experiments using the visual search paradigm we test our hypotheses to define key determinants of attention to nutrition labels.

Results

The statistical results for present–absent logo task are summarized in Table 1 and for one–two logos task in Table 2.

Discussion

The main purpose of the present study was to define the key determinants of consumer attention to labels. Two visual search tasks were used as effective experimental tool to investigate whether and how consumer attention to labels is captured as a function of the following factors: (1) set-size effect, e.g., absent vs. present label, one vs. two labels; (2) label characteristic, e.g., display size (standard vs. doubled); position of the label on the front of the pack; colour scheme

Conclusions

Visual search paradigm was applied as an effective experimental tool to investigate what attracts consumer attention to labels. It was found that label characteristics (e.g., display size, position of the label on FOP, colour scheme); and familiarity with the type of the logo and the location it appears in are key determinants of attention to labels. The strong familiarity effect reported here could have a huge impact when applied to real in-store environments, printing nutrition logos on

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Seventh EU Framework Programme Small Collaborative Project FLABEL (Contract No. 211905). The content of the paper reflects only the views of the authors; the European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained in this paper.

The authors are indebted to Matthew Peacock for his help in preparing the final manuscript.

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