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Introduction
This paper explores questions of how consumers evaluate and select unpacked, unbranded, and unlabelled food products - and the extent to which they are able to select products that will meet their expectations regarding eating quality. These are important questions, because for such products consumers are provided with little or no information at points-of-sale. Self-service counters for fruit and vegetables are relevant examples. Here, the usual information provided is price (and sometimes brand and/or origin). There is typically no information about flavour, nutritional content, health benefits, or other types of more or less persuasive information that might assist consumers in making their choice. Other examples are unbranded and unlabelled fresh meat and seafood. In order to find a product that will meet or exceed expectations regarding desirable attributes such as flavour and freshness customers must base their choices on the appearance of the product. In some instances, such as with fresh fruit and vegetables, products can be touched to "feel" the quality ([26] Peck and Childers, 2006). In addition, customers may ask trained staff for assistance when this is available.
An intriguing question is extent to which unassisted consumers are able to select unlabelled and unbranded food products that provide them with the most satisfying eating experience, just by looking and sometimes touching the products in the shop. This is an interesting question, because past research indicates that consumers are poor judges of the quality of certain types of products, such as fresh, unbranded and unlabelled meat ([17] Grunert et al. , 2004) and fresh seafood ([3] Anderson and Anderson, 1991; [32] Verbeke et al. , 2007). For example, [31] Steenkamp and Van Trijp (1996) found that the correlation between expected and experienced quality of meat (blade steak) was low. Similarly, in a study of consumers' perceptions and experiences with the quality of pork meat, [7] Bredahl et al. (1998) found that experienced eating quality was only moderately related to expected quality. Both studies focused on intrinsic quality attributes, such as colour and texture of the meat.
Few studies have addressed, in a wider sense, how consumers assess the quality of unlabelled and unbranded food products, for instance by exploring which strategies consumers apply when assessing and purchasing unbranded and unlabelled food products. For...