Date debate: How removing ‘best-before’ date labels affects consumer purchase behavior

Food date labeling can contribute to household food waste if these dates lead consumers to throw out food prematurely. Although the removal of ‘best-before’ date labels from suitable food product categories has been recommended to counter these concerns, the potential effects on purchase behavior have been neglected. We leverage a quasi-experimental setting provided by Tesco's purchase-stage initiative in 2018, which removed ‘best-before’ labels from pre-packaged fresh produce, to empirically investigate the effects on consumer purchase behavior. Using a difference-in-differences analysis of household scanner panel data, we examine the impact of date label removal on four important facets of consumer behavior: purchase incidence and interpurchase time for categories with date labels removed, and two broader purchase metrics to capture the initiative’s spillover effect on retailer patronage. While we find no aggregate effect on household purchase incidence and interpurchase time, we find significant variations in consumer response based on shopping basket characteristics and tendencies to purchase certain product types. These insights contribute to the date labeling literature and offer valuable guidance for retailers aiming to reduce food waste while balancing potential effects on consumer purchasing behavior.