101. DO CONSUMERS READ BOTTLED WATER LABEL? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM ROMANIA.
- Author
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PETRESCU, Dacinia Crina, DRAGAN, Alina Aida, and VAJU, Dumitru
- Subjects
CONSUMER behavior ,BOTTLED water ,EMPIRICAL research ,INFORMATION theory - Abstract
This study focused on consumers' behavior towards reading bottled water labels, providing new information about what details on the label consumers pay attention to and what elements makes them trust a specific bottled water brand. We used a convenience sample of urban consumers from Romania. Nine variables were taken into account to characterize consumers' label reading behavior: source, chemical composition, expiration date, brand, certificates, the beliefs that the more certificates and information mentioned on the label, the safer the brand and consumers' trust in the information on the label. The results indicate that the proportion of consumers that read the label of the water they buy is large (49% of tested consumers). Only one demographic variable of the ones taken into account for this study (gender, presence of children in the family, income) generated statistically significant differences in the reading frequency of various types of information on the label (p<.05). We also observed that, for this specific sample, the higher the reading frequency of one piece of information on the label, the higher the reading frequency of each of the other types of information on the label. Consumers have strong beliefs that more certificates and information mentioned on the label, the safer the water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015