• Home
  • About Us
  • Our Services
  • Tools, Templates and Training
  • Learn about food fraud
  • Report a food crime
  • News
You are here: Home / Archives for food professionals

7th December 2015 by foodfraudadvisors

Traceability myth #1: Consumers want transparency

Consumers want transparency.  It’s a phrase I hear all the time in supply chain and food safety circles.  Ask consumers if they want transparency and the answer is overwhelmingly ‘yes’.  It seems obvious; transparency equals knowledge, knowledge equals informed decisions, informed decisions result in good purchasing practices and good purchasing practices are a win for both consumers and suppliers.  But is that how food purchasing really works?

If consumers say they want transparency, and in a study by BBMG, GlobeScan and SustainAbility  a total 82% of consumers reported that “ingredient transparency is a very important or important factor” when shopping for food and beverages, why is it that ingredient transparency remains relatively unusual for most food products?

As a young food technologist working for a large snack food manufacturer, I learnt a valuable lesson in understanding consumer behaviour; those of us in marketing and product development jobs were very good at imagining the wants and preferences of our core consumers.  We were almost always wrong.  I was lucky enough to work for an organisation that was willing to spend money on focussed, in-depth and product-specific market research and we used that research to refine our product offerings and strengthen our brands.  What we learnt was that our own white-collar preferences were quite unlike the preferences of our core consumers and that self-reported attitudes to products almost never aligned with actual purchasing behaviour.  When it was time for consumers to select a bag of snacks from a retail store shelf, the qualities that we had been focussing on in our product development laboratory contributed very little to the decisions that were made.

I see the same thing in the current commentary of food safety and integrity professionals.  Traceability and transparency are important to food professionals and this is likely to be reflected in our food purchasing habits.    But for most people, food purchasing decisions are dominated by availability, cost, quality and sensory preferences.  Transparency is nice to have, but if it comes with a higher price tag it is unlikely to result in increased sales of a food product.  I don’t doubt that this is something most large food processors already understand.  We will continue to hear calls for supply chain transparency but we won’t be seeing it on an ordinary big-brand box of cookies any time soon.

Traceability myth #2; traceability is expensive

Traceability myth #3; traceability equals authenticity

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Filed Under: Authenticity, Food Fraud, Supply Chain, Traceability Tagged With: consumers, food fraud, food professionals, food scientist, marketing, preferences, transparency

MORE FROM FOOD FRAUD ADVISORS

Investigating Susceptibility to Food Fraud

Updated 26th June 2022 Some foods are more susceptible than others to economically motivated adulteration, … [Read More...]

Top 5 Food Frauds of 2022 (so far)

Food Fraud Advisors' Principal, Karen Constable, shares her top five food frauds for 2022. At the time of writing, … [Read More...]

Saffron Fraud (Everything You Ever Wanted to Know)

What is Saffron? Saffron is a spice made from the dried stigma (part of the flower) of the saffron plant (Crocus … [Read More...]

Food Fraud Databases Compared

Updated 26 July 2022 A food fraud database is a collection of information about food fraud incidents and food fraud … [Read More...]

Food Safety Standards Compared (2022)

    Different food safety standards have different food fraud requirements. For example: Some … [Read More...]

follow

  • View foodfraudadvice’s profile on Facebook
  • View karenconstable4’s profile on Twitter
  • LinkedIn

© Copyright 2015 - 2022 Food Fraud Advisors · All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy