Consumers' attention to functional food labels: Insights from eye-tracking and change detection in a case study with probiotic milk

• Consumers' attention to probiotic milk labels was studied.
• Health claim and nutritional information were not comprehensively processed.
• Label design did not largely affect consumers' visual processing of the labels.
• Visual processing of regular and functional milks did not differ.
• Recommendations for the design of functional food labels are discussed.

Labels can largely influence functional foods consumers' purchase decisions. The aim of the work was to study consumers' attention to functional food labels and to evaluate differences between regular and functional products probiotic milk as case study. Four labels were designed considering two types of product (regular milk vs. probiotic milk) and two label backgrounds. Sixty consumers were asked to look at the labels while their eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracker and to complete a word association task. Then, they had to complete eight flicker change detection tasks, involving four different changes on key aspects of the labels (brand, type of product, type of microorganism and health claim) for each label background. Visual processing of the labels was not largely affected by the type of product and label design. Health claims were not comprehensively processed, probably due to the high information density of this area. Besides, consumers' health-related associations were generated by graphic design and not by the functional aspect of the products, suggesting that graphic design plays a key role in shaping health-related associations. Recommendations for the design of functional food labels are discussed.