Paper Title
An Investigation Into the Presentation of Nutrition Claim as a Medium to Communicate Food Choices Among Malaysian Consumers

Abstract
Nutrition claim serves a purpose to quick inform consumers of nutritional value of food products and help consumers make healthy decisions. The increase in the use of nutrition claim demonstrated its effects on consumer perception and buying intention. However, misperception is inevitable due to low level of understanding among consumers, and the formats of nutrition claims were presented in a multitude format, yet, were scarcely discussed. Therefore, this research investigates the association between consumer knowledge; the elements of presentation of nutrition claims; and the perception towards the nutrition claims. 321 surveys were collected from major grocery stores in Klang Valley. Data gathered about Malaysian consumer's understanding of nutrition claim and their preferred presentation of nutrition claim formats during food buying process. The results indicated that consumers possess inadequate knowledge of nutrition claim and yet 44 percent of consumers demand more nutrition claims as a product carries more nutrition claims was perceived to be better. The positive perception was also higher in terms of perceived healthiness (70%), attractiveness of the product (73%) and higher product quality (73%). This study also identified consumers preferred terms such as “less” (47%), “low” (38%) and “rich” (36%) when using nutrition claims. In addition, more respondents preferred the application of graphic over text due to graphic is more communicative and less cognitive effort is required to process the information. This study implied the needs for the concise and comprehensive presentation of nutrition claims for effective comprehension. Index Terms - Nutrition Claim, Perception and Preference, Format and Presentation