CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 58, 2017 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Remigio Berruto, Pietro Catania, Mariangela Vallone Copyright © 2017, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. I SBN 978-88-95608-52-5; I SSN 2283-9216 Traceability and Labelling of Food Products from the Consumer Perspective Marzia Ingrassia, Simona Bacarella, Pietro Columba, Luca Altamore*, Stefania Chironi Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo, Italy luca.altamore@unipa.it Traceability of food products plays an important role in improving value chain processes of businesses and their reputation in the marketplace. In the past few years, consumers' concerns about food quality and personal health have been closely related to a continuous improvement of traceability systems and government regulation. Labeling of food products is a very important tool for consumers to acquire information about the quality of food, particularly at the purchase decision stage of the buying process. The objective of this research is to know consumers' preferences in regards to information contained in food labels. More particularly, this study focuses on what information is required by consumers on labels of food, highlighting groups of similar preferences. The interviews were carried out by telephone in two cities of north and south Italy (Milan and Palermo) on a sample of consumers extracted by stratified sampling. Cluster Analysis was performed. Results show a number of levels of information required by consumers that corresponds to different attributes of food product shown in the label. Consumers' preferences revealed a hierarchy of information required on labels. Particularly, with the increase of the amount of information required by the consumer, and contained in the foodstuffs label, the interest in information about the origin of the product and the processing increases as well. Moreover, results provide a measure of existing hierarchies among elements of information that describe food and that assess its quality. This findings show that consumers have more awareness about the relation between food production and quality, and they know that these elements are strictly related to attention of businesses in regards to safe management of agricultural systems. Furthermore, this study confirms previous literature that demonstrated how traceability is a method to reduce information asymmetry between producers and the consumer. 1. Introduction Discussions about new technologies applied in the food sector, especially with regards to genetic modification, have brought into focus the consumers’ newly awakened interest in food productions and the general lack of knowledge about it (Grunert, 2002). The several food hazards encountered since the beginning of the 90s, have shaken consumers and drew their attention to the importance of food's traceability. Food safety issues often result from the asymmetric information between consumers and suppliers, with regards to product- specific attributes (Ortega et al. 2011). Consumers seek for high quality food products and they infer this quality on the basis of a certain group of indicators, or attributes, that are classified according to the degree of visibility, namely: search, experience, and credence attributes. More particularly, credence attributes are those that consumers can't ever evaluate with confidence, but basing on consumers' opinions with regards to the product itself or the producer, even after consumption (Verbeke et al., 2006). Nowadays, to define food products' quality, consumers evaluate both intrinsic features of the product and external features, such as traceability, origin (COO), geographical indications and certification (Mascarello et al., 2015; Jover et al., 2004), and then choose foodstuffs according to elements that may characterize the product itself. The food label encloses a set of information that conveys to consumers the product's characteristics, this information can influence consumer' purchase behavior. Several studies point to the existence of a strong relationship between the food label and consumer reactions (Hoogland et al., 2007). The evolution of society, over the last forty years, has led to a radical change of needs and consumer behaviors. Through the purchase and the DOI: 10.3303/CET1758145 Please cite this article as: Ingrassia M., Bacarella S., Columba P., Altamore L., Chironi S., 2017, Traceability and labelling of food products from the consumer perspective, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 58, 865-870 DOI: 10.3303/CET1758145 865