Family Economics Review PDF Download

Excerpt from Family Economics Review: June, 1972 Slightly more than half of the 1, 700 Shoppers contacted said they were aware of the chain's open - dating program. Of the 429 Shoppers interviewed in depth, about two-thirds said that they had used the date information at least once. Five item groups(bread, milk, refrigerated dough products, other dairy products, and eggs) accounted for 70 percent of all uses of the open dates. When shoppers were asked what the date told them about a product, their answers varied widely. Only 20 percent correctly interpreted the date as the last day of sale. Forty-five percent said the date represented some time in the past-for example, date of manufacture, packaging, delivery, or display. Twenty-two percent said that the date indicated the end of the product's usable life-a misinterpretation that could lead to a lot of perfectly good food being wasted if consumers followed through on it. Perhaps the most important group of answers came from 38 percent of the Shoppers - they said quite simply that the date tells either how fresh an item is or just that it is fresh. From the variety of answers given and the frequency of answers involving past dates, obviously Shoppers do not look carefully at the dates on the items they purchase. The Shoppers' lack of concern about the precise meaning of codes or dates was con firmed by their lack of interest in the code book. Only nine of the 429 women inter viewed in depth had ever used the code book. If a Shopper mentioned having used date information for a Specific time, she was asked specific questions about it. Only for refrigerated dough products was there any substantial agreement among Shoppers as to the meaning of the date. These pro ducts, unlike most of those included in the open-dating program, have been marked with a readable date for years. For most items, the manufacturer has also included some storage instructions and a statement that, for best results, the item Should be used before the date Shown. Two-thirds of the Shoppers who said that they had used date information for refrigerated dough products said that the date represented the last day the item Should be used. This was the single most frequent answer given for any product. As far as influencing their use of an item, many Shoppers said that the date had no influence at all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.