A study on consumer perception and attitude towards food safety with references to Coimbatore city

The recent food crises and its great diffusion through the media had as consequence a reduction of the consumer's confidence, in general, and of the Indian ones in particular, in the products that they buy and consume. These events also served to disclose some of the existing problems in the current marketing chain, in which many sectors result to have low, or no transparency or unknown ones to the consumers. All these questions triggered the interest of researchers to study the impact of food safety related issues on consumer behavior. The objective of this paper is to know the consumer perception and attitude towards food safety. To study the consumer attention to different label information. To know the level of satisfaction towards the food safety measures. Internet interviews have been used as the main source of information and have been conducted throughout sample of 200 persons, representing the different geographic areas and age groups. The factors measuring lifestyle, especially those related to safety, and mainly, consumption experience, seem to be the main aspects explaining Indian consumers’ perception on food safety. For moreover, one evidences of the reading of labels, the date of caducity is the information more consulted by the consumers, leaving of part other important food safety information and relation diet versus health, such as the instructions of storage and cooking, the nutritional value and the ingredients. In order to restore the confidence lost, an effort of diffusion of clear and truthful information is necessary, for beyond the necessity of an efficient coordination throughout all the marketing chain in order to offer food safety products.