Study on the Effect of Prepared Dish Label Information on Consumers’ Willingness to Pay and its Mechanism

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_159How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Prepared Dishes; Label Information; Influencing Factors

Abstract

The demand for ready-to-eat and prepared meals has increased significantly in recent years as people move to a convenience-oriented lifestyle, especially in urban areas. Due to changing consumer behavior and the continuous advancement of technology in food processing and logistics, the new prepared dishes industry is booming. However, at this stage, there are differences in the safety and quality standards of prepared dishes, inconsistent consumer acceptance, and unclear food labeling problems still exist. This not only affects the sale of prepared dishes but also may lead to a series of problems such as food safety. The label of prepared food is the most direct and easiest way for consumers to learn about the product. Whether the label information contained in the prepared dish label is comprehensive and effective has a great influence on whether consumers buy the prepared dish. Therefore, this paper will investigate the influence of prepared food label information on consumers’ willingness to pay and clarify the potential mechanism of this influence. Field research, quantitative investigation, case study, qualitative research and other methods were used, involving different samples of 100 participants. Analysis using field survey to assess the interaction between pre-cooked food products and consumers, as well as how specific pre-cooked food label attributes, such as price/performance ratio, quality standard information, and nutritional information, will affect purchasing decisions. And consider the future development trend and enlightenment of prefabricated dishes.

This article is based on the article “The Analysis of Residents’ Intention to Consume Pre-Made Dishes in China:” by Xiong, et al. ^[1] to builds an analytical framework for the research background. By analyzing several articles of the same type, such as Bo Yi and Hengyi Xu’s article “Research and Development Status of Prepared Foods in China: a review” ^[2]. After classifying the research, more mainstream influencing factors were found, and a questionnaire was developed. First, the consumer group of prepared vegetable products is divided, and age and work nature are considered as the main factors. Secondly, the information attribute expressed by the prepared dish label is taken as the entry point, and the price information, quality information and nutrition information are the main factors to consider. At the same time, the influencing mechanism behind the buyer’s willingness to pay is analyzed, to explain and confirm the reasons why various kinds of different information on the label above are important influencing factors.

The research results show that since effectively alleviating information asymmetry and satisfying consumers’ psychological expectations are the main ways to improve their willingness to pay, transparent and comprehensive labels have a significant positive impact on consumers’ willingness to pay. Label information such as price, quality, nutritional information and convenience together influence the purchasing decision process of consumers. These insights have important implications for manufacturers and marketers to strengthen labeling strategies to better meet consumer needs and optimize financial returns.

To sum up, in the production process of prepared dishes, manufacturers should not only pay special attention to the quality and safety of prepared dishes but also pay attention to the degree of information disclosure of the outer packaging. Through in-depth research on the needs and preferences of consumer groups, enterprises optimize product quality and label content to further enhance the competitiveness of prepared vegetables in the market.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yifei Tan
AU  - Xuning Zhuang
AU  - Mengdie Gao
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/07/10
TI  - Study on the Effect of Prepared Dish Label Information on Consumers’ Willingness to Pay and its Mechanism
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 11th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research（ICHSSR 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1419
EP  - 1431
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_159
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_159
ID  - Tan2025
ER  -