secondly, it may assure consumers on the public surveillance on the quality
attribute of the product. In other words, labelling policy may have an option and an
existence value independent by the actual direct use value attached by consumers.
However, food producers and retailers are well aware that labelling is a limited
resource from at least two points of view. Firstly, space of the label itself is limited;
this means that a trade- off among mandatory information and voluntary ones
arise. Secondly, consumers have limited ability and willingness to process a great
deal of information. This especially because consumers devote a limited amount of
time in shopping and behaviour is become quite “routinized” . Thus, an overloaded
provision of information might have potential adverse effects resulting from
consumer indifference. An overloaded label or package might cause consumer
ignorance due to the lack of time or ability to process such information.
Additionally, it may also yield loss of confidence from non- understanding . In
conclusion, to be effective, the information labelled have to be read, processed,
understood and accepted by consumers .
The main question for the Italian and Spanish food sectors and food researches is
which indications consumers are interested in. This is essential, considering that in
some countries the mandatory beef labelling information are the least important
and least attended cues by beef consumers (Verbeke, et al.; 2002). Hence, there are
some reasons for focusing on what consumers really need or expect in terms of
information. Therefore, a currently challenge is to target an optimum level of
simple, clear and credible information to improve consumers beef quality
perception.
3. Consumer demand for food quality and safety and his ‘right to
know or to be informed’
During the last decades, food quality and food safety issues have become aspects of
greater attention due to the existing awareness on aspects related to new
agricultural productions, animal welfare concerns, employment of hormones, etc.
Even more, since last food crises, consumers are demanding more transparency in
the food- chain and more information on the diverse characteristics of foods .
There have been developed many routes for delivering messages about food quality
and safety to consumers. As commented above, the use of quality labels, brands,
origin certifications are, on the one hand, some examples of food sector responses
to product differentiation opportunities and, on the other hand, commercial
strategies to reduce risk exposure and maintain consumer confidence. Mandatory
labelling of credence attributes has been justified on the basis of consumers ‘right
to know’, for instance, genetically modified foods, country of origin labelling, some
ways of processing, such as irradiation, etc.
Consumers’ expectations on food quality and safety are driven by extrinsic and
intrinsic cues that might vary among persons, countries, situations, experiences
and, for a given population, across time. Purchase decision can be considered as a
sequential process; the determinant factors which affect quality and safety
perception will vary across the different stage of the process, depending if the
consumer is considered before purchase, at the point of sale or upon consumption
(Issanchou; 1996). More simply, as pointed by the Total Food Quality Model , it is
possible to distinguish between before and after purchase evaluations. The model
aims to investigate what quality means to consumers, and especially how they
integrate different information (intrinsic and extrinsic quality cues) in order to
develop their quality expectations at the point of purchase and, finally, how these
are related to the quality experienced by final users after consumption.
For beef, different attributes are considered in the definition of quality perception
and expectations. These can be summarized as shown in , according to the
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