A STUDY ON CONSUMER AWARENESS TOWARDS NUTRITIONAL LABELING ON BRANDED FOOD PRODUCTS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO COIMBATORE CITY

Abstract

Food product packaging and labeling have numerous important roles to play in the emerging market environment. Food labels perform important third-party roles in the food marketing system through their impact on product design, advertising, consumer confidence in food quality and consumer education on diet and health. The trends towards healthier eating have increased the consumer demand for detailed, accurate and accessible information on food safety and quality covering nutritional content, ingredients and health claims. Consumers also demand product information, such as production and expiry dates, storage and cooking instructions. Food label is one of several information channels available to the consumers, including mass media, books, advertising, education programs and medical advice. This paper focuses on the awareness of nutritional labeling on the branded packaged food products. The researcher used convenience sampling method. The researcher used primary and secondary data to collect the details from the respondents. The sample size of this study consists of 136 consumers. Tools used are Percentage Method, Friedman Rank analysis and Chi-Square Test. It is found that association between demographic variables and reading of nutritional label, out of six demographics viz. gender, education, occupation, monthly family income, food habit and reason for special diet statistical significance is achieved only between food habit and reading of nutritional label to reject the hypothesis , whereas, there no association between the demographics such as gender, education, occupation, monthly income andreason for special diet towards reading of nutritional label to support null hypothesis.