Hedonic and Utilitarian Motives for Consumers’ Learning Processes: The GDA Food Label

As one of the stimuli flows in the food market the GDA-labeling was established in 2007. The original concept of introducing this label was to provide information that may bring about more healthy eating patterns. Four years after launching it seems relevant to understand how well the consumers have adopted to that information. Consumer learning that occurs through exposure to external sources of information such as GDA-labeling can happen consciously or subconsciously, on a high involvement level or due to the presence of more conducive situation. Therefore understanding learning process and its substantiations such as utilitarian and hedonic motives are salient issues. This study has aims to understand learning process of GDA-label and to determine two types of learning substantiations. Relatively to the respondents’ education background the recall- and comprehension tests were rather unsatisfactory. In contrast to that the recognition test was relatively good. The result of this study indicated that in this area the appearance or assembly of the GDA-symbol was not accounted to be problematical. The consumers could adopt, learn and memorize the contents of the symbol very well. However, a significant amount of communication or education campaigns is required. Communication activities are necessary in order to position the GDAlabel according to its original concept.