Az optimális élelmiszerjelölés kritériumai a fogyasztók szemszögéből - a fókuszcsoportos kutatás eredményei

Abstract

Our team have made a comprehensive market study of consumer judgment of food labels. Our aim was to discover the knowledge, attitudes, and preferences of Hungarians. In this paper we present the results of the qualitative research, which examined factors affecting consumption with relation to optimizing food labels. We performed focus group interviews in several cities in Hungary, where 8-8 persons were selected by a preliminary screening questionnaire. We determined that the most important pieces of information on the package are the brand name and the expiration date (excepting the price), and participants care less about ingredients and origin. They find font size too small, and they are skeptical about the validity of the information on the labels. Labels about nutrition benefits were important only to those participants who were forced to check them because of some kind of problem (e.g. illness). It turned out that consumers are not aware of Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) markings, so defining the ideal shape was a severe difficulty. They said unanimously that this label is not suitable to help decide which food is healthy. According to our results, nutrition effects do not play a significant role in people's selection of food. It seems that consumers do not believe there is a connection between which foods they select and how healthy they are. It is necessary to strengthen consumers' awareness of foods' ingredients and origins; to achieve this, effective communication channels must be found.