Empirical testing of the impact on consumer choice resulting from differences in the composition of seemingly identical branded products.

Differences in composition of seemingly identical branded (food) products (DC-SIP) has been a source of growing concern in the EU in recent years. In 2013, the European Parliament drew attention to the fact that findings of various surveys show that "on a long-term basis consumers are concerned about possible differences in the quality of products with the same brand and packaging which are distributed in the single market" (European Parliament 2018). In 2016, leaders of the EU Member States (MS) brought up the issue of DC-SIP in the European Council and agreed to investigate the existence of the practice further and to eventually finding a solution at European level., During his State of the Union Address in 2017, President Juncker explicitly referred to the issue of companies selling seemingly identical products with a different composition in different MS. To provide a snapshot into how widespread this situation was in the EU, in close collaboration with experts from Member States' competent authorities and stakeholders of the food chain, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) developed a harmonised methodology for the comparative testing of DC-SIP in food across MS (European Commission, 2018). The result of the application of this methodology to different products found that 9% and 22% of evaluated food products had differences in composition but had identical or similar front packaging, respectively. The rest of the food products evaluated were either identical (33%), had similar compositional characteristics (9%) or had a different composition and also a different front package (27%) (European Commission 2019).     «

Differences in composition of seemingly identical branded (food) products (DC-SIP) has been a source of growing concern in the EU in recent years. In 2013, the European Parliament drew attention to the fact that findings of various surveys show that "on a long-term basis consumers are concerned about possible differences in the quality of products with the same brand and packaging which are distributed in the single market" (European Parliament 2018). In 2016, leaders of the EU Member States (MS...     »