Development of a Measuring Instrument to Understand the Impact of Mobile Product Information Systems on Consumers' Food Choice

Consumers' Food Choice has been researched in the past, but with the rise of mobile technologies such as barcode scanning, new possibilities of obtaining additional information at the Point of Sale (PoS) emerged. This raises the question about the impact of Mobile Product Information Systems (MPIS) on consumers' perceived food quality and thus their food choices. Since most MPIS are not provided by producers of the food product, there is a risk that consumers no longer base their decisions on information provided on the product packaging, but instead on mobile information of third party service providers. As a first step this study provides a conceptual model to identify relevant influencing factors of MPIS. Thereafter, an instrument measuring the impact of MPIS on consumers' food choice is developed and tested in a 3-round item-sorting task to ensure validity of the constructs. The instrument comprises a 33-item questionnaire based on 8 constructs.