Consumer Protection in Food Products under Review: A Bibliometric Approach

The topic of consumer protection in food products is starting to fall under the radar of researchers due to its novelty framed both by the advance of technology in the food sector facilitated deeply by the Covid-19 Pandemic, which is providing new concerns for consumers, and by the ethical perspective of producers, that is often questioned. Current research in this field has focused on physical retail, while the e-commerce, food delivery apps or even dark kitchens have grown with the speed of light. Also, consumer protection in food products has been the topic of international studies in the EU due to the perceived differences in branded food products sold in Eastern and Western EU countries, the results of these studies being questioned by many consumers. Therefore, this study aims at providing an image of the topic of consumer protection in food products in the scientific literature and how it evolved overtime through a mixed method approach. First, a bibliometric study will be performed on Web of Science data. Second, a co-occurrence analysis will complete the image and show the main concerns of researchers when it comes to consumer protection in food products. The research questions we are trying to answer through this study concern how has research on consumer protection in food products evolved with online retail and which countries lead in consumer protection in food products research? The main results of this study point out that consumer protection in food products is a hot potato of research, several countries/institutions contribute to funding research on this topic. The main themes that come under the large umbrella of consumer protection in food products are online mislabeling, traceability, food fraud, and online food fraud.