Food shopping is not a leisure activity: Consumer heuristics and their impact on the effectiveness of ecolabels on Australian dairy products

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in sustainability information and communication. Food industries, such as dairy, are under increasing pressure and scrutiny to demonstrate sustainability, leading to the use of communication tools, such as ecolabels, to provide environmental or ethical information for consumers via packaging. This study aimed to investigate how conscious consumers interact with and utilise ecolabels in their decision-making using bottled milk as an indicative dairy product. This was achieved using online semi-structured interviews (n = 16) that included a visual aide, allowing participants to observe and comment on the front and back labelling of six different milk bottles. This research found consumers do not view food shopping as a leisure activity, but rather as a necessary and menial task which they aim to complete as quickly as possible. Consumers, therefore aimed to streamline their decision-making process using heuristics such as brand, price, taste, and quality. Ecolabels were found to have little influence on conscious consumers choice of milk products largely due to participants expressing confusion and scepticism about the reliability and integrity of the information being communicated. As conscious consumers are the market segment most likely to engage with ecolabels, the fact they largely did not, in favour of other product information, highlights ecolabels in their current from are unlikely to be used by most consumer groups. Pairing ecolabels with trusted and developed consumer heuristics could aid in increasing consumer use of, and trust in, ecolabels.