Last week, during my course in Consumer Behavior I invited Dr. Daniele Asioli, Lecturer in Consumer Studies, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development of the University of Reading (UK).
Based on his manuscript “Making sense of the “clean label” trends: A review of consumer food choice behavior and discussion of industry implications”.
This review paper aims to fill the gap via three main objectives, which are to a) develop and suggest a definition that integrates various understandings of clean label into one single definition, b) identify the factors that drive consumers' choices through a review of recent studies on consumer perception of various food categories understood as clean label with the focus on organic, natural and ‘free from’ artificial additives/ingredients food products and c) discuss implications of the consumer demand for clean label food products for food manufacturers as well as policy makers. They suggest to define label, both in a broad sense, where consumers evaluate the cleanliness of product by assumption and through inference looking at the front-of-pack label and in a strict sense, where consumers evaluate the cleanliness of product by inspection and through inference looking at the back-of-pack label. One of the first definitions by Ingredion (2014) defines “…a ‘clean label’ positioned on the pack means the product can be positioned as ‘natural’, ‘organic’ and/or ‘free from additives/preservatives”.
