The impact of food labels on consumer purchasing behavior in Malaysia

Changes in the food environment, including the convenience foods, frozen foods and fast foods high in energy and fat content, has affected the views of the health conscious consumers in Malaysia. One approach to measure the health and safety consciousness among Malaysians is to measure the effect of food labeling on the public decision when purchasing food products. Food labeling offers a great deal of information on most packaged foods. This research examines both theoretical and practical use of food labeling for consumer products in Malaysia and tries to validate an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) model on the data derived from the consumers in Malaysia. Today consumers are exposed to many labels in the food market. Therefore for Malaysian consumers, the existence of labels on food products has become a subject of interest. Some labels are misleading and can create confusion for consumers. Despite increasing the awareness among consumers, still many of them have problems with the understanding of scientific terms and concepts of food labels.