Consumer Awareness Of Traditional Food Labeling As Well As Local Products - A Local Perspective

Lately, an increasing concern of the consumer regarding healthy food was noticed. On one hand, this interest is constantly growing, as globalization determines consumers to favour traditional food as well as local products, which both of are important part of the culture of various places. On the other hand, there’s a constantly growing interest with regards to the regulation and labeling of these types of foods. Traditional products are carefully standardization, while local food products are subject to intense surveillance for food safety. In the EU, three schemes are used, all of which are seen as a means of product differentiation of unbranded or generic agricultural products. The term "local" is used for food in different ways, however, no generally accepted, unanimous definition for food of "local origin" is currently established. Also, local food is not a clearly defined group of products and has no legal standard, but an attempt to define them, qualify them as food produced and consumed locally exists. The production and selling of local food must be seen as a catalyst to maintain and develop the local community and at the same time, a source of sustainable benefits to local economies. Consumers know and are aware of the characteristics, differences and meaning of a traditional food, but what significance does the ”local food” labelling have? How well are they known and how do consumers use the information on labels? Do they make the necessary differences? How important are certain characteristics in choosing these products? To answer these questions, I used a self-administered structured electronic questionnaire as an instrument for data-gathering. The sample was randomly selected from a database of e-mail addresses all over the counry Bihor. Most likely that Romanians have a certain reluctance to respond to messages as ”fill up” questionnaire or test aiming a research, so the response rate was very low. This (work-in-progress) paper is a qualitative empirical research paper, that will give an image of the consumer’s awareness of traditional food and local products’ labeling; it is a local perspective and it will inform Department's future work in piecing together more pieces of the big puzzle in the field of marketing, management and economics of food.