Context

In 2020, the European Commission adopted the Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy for a fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly food system. One of its goals is to provide European consumers with clear and easily accessible information to facilitate their choice of a healthy and sustainable diets. There is, however, limited space on packaging labels that are printed or affixed to products, and there is a variety of new information consumers would potentially need to access. This information relates to, for example, the environmental impact of the food they consume, the ethical standards of the producer, or the processing the food went through.

This is why we need to explore ways to provide information to consumers through other means, such as smartphones by scanning QR codes on products.

Goals

Against this background, it is important to understand how consumers behave with respect to QR codes and the information provided through them. Specifically, we want to know whether consumers are willing and able to use, understand and take account of food information provided off-labels (e.g. through online means), and how off-label compares with on-label information in those respects.

Methods

We run an experiment that resembles the choice situation in a supermarket. The experiment was conducted online with 3420 participants from three Member States of the European Union (Spain, Germany, and Bulgaria). The sample was stratified in terms of age, gender, regions, place of residence (rural vs. urban) and education level. Participants in our experiment made choices within pairs of alternative products. We varied whether those products had all information on the packaging, or some of the information could be accessed only by scanning a QR code. We measured whether consumers systematically avoid products with QR codes, how often they scanned those QR codes, and whether they remembered and took account of the information that was provided via those QR codes.

Expected outcomes

This study provides insights into whether consumers are ready and able to use digital means of accessing food information and addresses the scarcity of studies addressing consumers’ preference for and ability to use and understand on-package vs. digitally provided information. The study also focuses on categories of consumers who could be potentially adversely impacted by the introduction of such other means, such as those who are digitally excluded or find it hard to process wider ranges of food information coming from different sources.

Results & outputs