Our western society is at a turning point, facing a health crisis, an ecological crisis and an economic crisis. This necessarily impacts consumers and, when it comes to food issues, consumers are faced with even more complex choices to make. The injunctions are multiple, like eating healthy, buying local, or choosing eco-friendly food products; which raises confusion. Plus, these injunctions are sometimes perceived as not very reconcilable with other aspects like tastiness or low prices. Indeed, food has always been associated with pleasure, conviviality, and discovery; consumers, in the tense contexts we know, are not ready to give up on these aspects in their diets. Furthermore, the question of price is also an issue, particularly in the inflationist situation we are in, as sustainable food is associated with higher prices in consumers’ minds. Accordingly, how do consumers deal with all these injunctions, limits and wants?
This thesis is aimed at developing the concept of Food Consumption Confusion (FCC), determining its causes and consequences, the ways of reducing it, and other potential information about this phenomenon. More precisely, we would investigate the impact of contradictory information on FCC and other following consumers’ behaviours, as contradictory information seems to increase with the proliferation of information on food packaging. Plus, we contemplate answering questions about the concept of Perceived Consumer Effectiveness (a consumer’s perception about his or her ability to contribute to the solution of a problem through specific behaviours (Ellen et al., 1991)), its conceptualization, its relationship with Self-Efficacy (one’s perceived ability to perform the behaviour that will enable him or her to reach desired outcomes (Bandura, 1977; Ajzen, 2002)), its link with FCC etc. PCE is an interesting concept that we would like to include in our research, but it is not defined enough and needs clarification.