Impact of Nutritional Information in the Behavior of Restaurant Consumers

Abstract

When in the presence of imperfect information, the conditions for quality analysis of the products are impaired. Therefore, food purchase brings a certain level of risk associated, which may be reduced by increasing amount and quality of the information. In this sense, this study aims at analyzing the behavior of restaurant consumers in regard to the nutritional information of the food, by interviewing 411 people in Campo Grande, MG, Brazil. The data analysis technique used was frequency distribution, datacross and cluster analysis. The cluster analysis showed that, between economic classes A, B and C, thare were no significant differences in the behavior of the consumer regarding nutrition information. However, class D is less concerned with the availability of this information and the healthiness of the food. With these results, we may conclude that this phenomenon is happening in society as a whole, weakening only in the lower social classes.