Abstract:
Nutrition has become a major concern for the majority of Sri Lankan consumers who are
accumulating remarkable knowledge due to the development of health education, through
the implementation of various governmental and volunteer projects. The nutrition claims
accompanying food related products draw much attention of such sensitive consumers in
the country, and the response expected is highly positive. In this scenario, marketers of such
products have a social responsibility towards communicating and educating the consumers
correctly about diet related disease issues.
In Sri Lanka, many local products enter the market without nutritional labels. Given
the liberalized economic environment in Sri Lanka, local food producers face immense
competition from the imported products, specially from the products of giant multinational
companies that have nutritional labels. Therefore, it is imperative to study the impact of
nutrition claims on consumer buying behavior in Sri Lanka which is the major objective of
this study.
A questionnaire was administered to collect primary data, selecting a sample of 148
respondents from the Colombo district. The research findings reveal that majority of the
consumers are knowledgeable of nutrition claims, and nutrition information appeared in
food labels. The survey found that doctors were the most preferred and most trusted source
of information. Further findings disclose that consumers highly prefer the labels which
contain more detailed information and simpler wordings. Thus, it can be concluded that
the local food marketers will immensely be benefited if they incorporate relevant nutrition
information in their marketing communication.
