in the assessment of fair food labelling

Nordic Seminar on Misleading Food Labelling, Copenhagen, November 18-19, 2019

Legal versus psychological grey zones in the assessment of fair food labelling

Viktor Smith

(vs.msc@cbs.dk)

The FairSpeak Group, Copenhagen Business School

(www.fairspeak.org)

Collaborators include:

DTU Food  Danish Language Council  Centre for Cognitive Semiotics and Humanities Lab, Lund University  Coop Denmark Toms Group  The Danish Consumer Council Tænk  Danish Active Consumers  DVFA.

The FairSpeak Group

investigates consumers’ decoding of the elaborate cocktails of words, texts, numbers, pictures, symbols, colours, and shapes found on food packaging during everyday shopping with a special focus on supporting fair and preventing potentially misleading communication

About 75% of our purchase decisions are made on the spot, in 90% of them the back is not checked, and the decision is made in a few seconds, e.g. Simmonds & Spence (2017: 340); POPIAI (2014)

Purchasing food today… and tomorrow

Smith et al. (2015: 11-12)

 Increased risk of miscommunication

✓ Focus on packaging (or webpage) rather than product

✓ One-way

communication

✓ Limited or no sensory contact

Other influences:

Shopping goals, time and

money constraints, knowledge levels, beliefs, values, identities, culinary preferences, food

culture, etc.

Let’s try it out ourselves:

Which product would you choose?

Why does Peter Lund Madsen keep getting it wrong??

Two views of consumers

…and of fair food labelling

Cf. Jones (2014;); Clement et al. (2012); Trzaskowski( (2011); Inardona & Poncibo (2007)

Homo Economicus Hedonists going astray

Humans are rational creatures who will make informed and appropriate

decisions if only they are given access to sufficient amounts of relevant and

correct information

This is said by: (Many) legislators, lawyers, NGOs, nutrition expert

Consumers are deeply irrational and inconsistent in their preferences, they do not seek the information needed to follow such preferences, and let their purchase decisions depend on other factors such as curiosity, pleasure-seeking, and spontaneous liking

This is said by: (Many) marketing and advertising specialists, consumer behaviour researchers, food manufacturers, retailers

Fair speak?

The Homo Economicus approach :

• Presumption of (desired) informed choice

• Focus on measurable product facts (conveyed by words and numbers)

• Prediction of effect (ultimately) based on common-sense judgments for each case

• Research focus: law, food and nutrition science, politics

• Fairness = factual correctness and compliance with rules

The “realist” approach (so far mostly practiced in marketing):

• Focus on mainstream (impulsive/routine) choices

• Focus on behaviour (as triggered by multisensory cues)

• Reliance on empirical and experimental evidence

• Research focus: consumer behaviour & marketing + selective insights from psychology, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, sensory research, etc.

• Fairness = (1) obeying the law (2) not causing disappointment (= bad for sales)

The Fair Speak approach:

• Focus on supporing the preference-conscious choice (PCC)

• More versatile use of insights from psychology, psycholinguistics, sensory science, etc. (many not applied to food labelling before)

• Bridging between oppositions instead of deepening them

What could be experienced as

potentially problematic according to the

respective approaches

here?

There are many good arguments for questioning

consumer’s rationality

AND INDEED much of our decision-making is based on

heuristics, stereotype thinking, inferences, and Halo effects

Which product is most healthy? …and tasty?

The same is true for food

And they demonstrably do check and compare such facts more often in some purchase scenarios such as

“shopping for friends” or “looking for the least unhealthy kind of candy” – as demonstrated in FairSpeak test series ShopTrip I-III.

E.g. FairSpeak (2014)

When asked, consumers stress the importance of having easy access to check and compare nutrition facts (fat, sugar), best before dates, weight, etc.

E.g. Bosman (2014) ; Venter (2010)

HOWEVER

 Fair speak is about supporting rather than

obscuring such attempts

The legal definition of misleading commercial practices (including labelling)

EU Directive 2005/29/EC, Article 6:

A commercial practice shall be regarded as

misleading if it contains false information and is

therefore untruthful or in any way, including overall presentation, deceives or is likely to deceive the

average consumer, even if the information is

factually correct, in relation to one or more of the

following elements, and in either case causes or is

likely to cause him to take a transactional decision

that he would not have taken otherwise: [+ list of

product properties and other circumstances relative

to which consumers may potentially be misled]

Can the legal definition be operationalized?

 When and how can true information mislead?

 Is there always a direct link between knowledge and action?

 Who is the average consumer?

^ Only “well-informed” is a (relatively) stable benchmark, whereas “observant” and “circumspect” depend on the

circumstances, not the person

 What is “information”?

 An operationalization would require (inter alia):

 Focus on the preference conscious choice rather than a fully informed or a purely impulsive or routine-based choice

 Focus on likely decoding outcome rather than possible

outcomes when all information on the packaging is checked

against all available knowledge… because that never happens

Example:

Basic principle: If there is any doubt about the actual effect, then test it instead of guessing or arguing. Suitable methods are available.

I need to consumer less calories!

An yet the product with most calories among several alternative ends up in the basket

A FEW EXAMPLES

Of archetypical conflict scenarios

and some leads for fair solutions

Place = conceived origin? ( for novel food names)

Study: Smith, Zlatev, Barratt & van de Weijer (2014)

The short answer is NO. What is decisive are the verbo-visual surroundings of the name in the total Front of Packaging (FOP) design

Do natural pictures mean natural ingredients? (to consumers)

Study: Smith, Barratt & Selsøe Sørensen (2015)

Yes, to a certain degree

But:

 The study also showed that less informed consumers had more faith in naturalness than more informed ones across product categories

 It is well documented that pictures can elicit spontaneous emotional responses and willingness to buy overruling factual knowledge

So a risk of miscommunication is definitely present…

Follow-up on fairness test in DR-TV “Kontant”

Fairness issue: Can visual elements and brand names (for which the

authorities generally accept a wider room for creativity and storytelling) lead consumers to expect Danish origin even if a non-Danish origin of product and/or key ingredients is clearly stated in the mandatory product information?

Test summary (N = 36)

• Participants: Convenience sample of students and non-academic staff members recruited at CBS Campus

• Instruction:

”Buy Danish and as local as possible”

• Stimuli: Product pairs from four product categories (poultry salad, sliced chicken breasts, pickled gherkins, and beer) with one product in each category carrying PMEs (potentially misleading elements) with regard to origin according to the consumer organization Tænk

• Results: The products with PMEs were chosen by 76% on average and by 88%

for the poultry salad in preference to an alternative product or ”pass” (= a draw)

NB! The products are NOT illegal according to current DVFA

practices and the consumer organization Tænk did NOT take formal action against them

But how come consumers get it so wrong?

”Vælg dansk og gerne så lokalt som muligt”

The most common pattern

A critical consumer (who responded “pass”)

How come this consumer responded A?

Psychological mechanisms in play:

• Competition between goal-driven (top-down) and stimulus-driven (bottom-up) visual attention

(one looks for certain facts but ends up fixating on what catches the eye), e.g. Orquin & Loose (2013) ; Chun & Wolfe (2001)

• Instinctive economizing of time and effort, in particular during low- involvement decision-making

(why keep on searching when the case seems clear off hand?), ^e.g. Petty & Wegener (1999); O’Keefe (2012)

• Magic Bullet and Halo-effects

(”If one attribute appears positive, others are probably positive as well”…one hopes) Chandon (2013) ; Roe, Levy & Derby (1999)

• Cost/benefit tradeoffs during relevance processing

(“if it’s highlighted, it’s important… and I have an ide why”, e.g. Clement et al. (201/); Sperber & Wilson (1996)

• Subconscious desire to avoid cognitive dissonance

(= discomfort emerging from having or seeking information that is inconsistent with other information that one has already accepted), e.g. O’Keefe (2002); Festinger (1964)

And yet, prevention of miscommunication

is possible if so wished:

This is fair speak!

And it’s not necessarily that hard!

Let us decode some

packages together

Why choose this spread salad in preference to

comparable ones at offer next to it?

…or these eggs?

What is this in the first place?

…or this?

Why would you choose this protein bar in your local fitness center in preference to others?

And would it make a difference if you went deeper and checked the manufacturer’s homepage?

https://wholifoods.com/pages/about

Is there a fairness problem?

Did grandpa really make his ketchup himself?

A B

… and most fair?

Fair speak does not need to be dull!

Which product is most natural?

Summing up:

● ”Trivial” miscommunication can be substantially reduced by accommodating existing insights on human psychology and real-time multimodal communication and by including fairness considerations early in the design process

But much could be achieved by:

 A clearer differentiation of informed and guided choices: both could be better supported!



Increased interactivity and personalization of consumer communication (in a responsible way)

● However: Miscommunication emerging from complex

facts, uneven levels of consumer knowledge, and varying

attitudes and priorities cannot be entirely avoided

✓ Focus on monitor/display during shopping

✓ Even less sensory contact than today before purchase But also:

✓ Vast potential for increased interactivity

✓ (In principle) unlimited access to data both ways

 And perhaps more fair speak?

The future

Workflow: How can fairness be assured from idea to final labelling?

Read more in Smith et al. (2015); Clement, Selsøe Sørensen & Smith (2010)

Manufacturer:

Responsibility:

Product, product properties, salse

Method:

Quality test, marketing plan etc.

Design Agency Responsibility:

Creative design solution Method:

Focus groups, quantitative tests

Legal Department/

Consultant

Responsibility:

Legality of product AND

packaging

Method:

Checking legal texts and administrative

practices No empirical

evidence!

In the future? Empirical testing of fairness as part of the creative process just as liking and willingness to buy are tested today

 Competitive

advantage on a still more regulated EU market?

The current workflow (more or less):

Questions for debate:

• What more could be done to support fair and prevent potentially misleading food labelling?

• Does change start from administrative practices or companies’ self-regulation?

• Is there a societal basis for change at all?

Thank you

“In the good old days” (and sometimes even today)

✓ Focus on product

✓ Two-way communication

✓ Direct sensory contact

About 75% of our purchase decisions are made on the spot, in 90% of them the back is not checked, and the decision made in a few seconds, e.g. Simmonds & Spence (2017: 340); POPIAI (2014)

✓ Focus on packaging

✓ One-way communication

✓ Limited sensory contact

In today’s supermarkets

Purchasing food

Smith et al. (2015: 11-12)

 Increased risk of miscommunication