Consumer acceptance of a new product: food packaging using a smart bio-switch concept

Abstract

In the past twenty years, the use of plastic packaging has grown remarkably, because of its convenience for manufacturing, handling and daily usage. In particular, multilayer barrier packaging has challenged metal and glass for a longer shelf life in food packaging, because of its barrier properties as well as its versatility and convenience. For this reason, this barrier packaging market has grown rapidly, and represents about 2% of the Gross National Product of most developed countries (Ahvenainen, 2003). Modern food packaging no longer has just a passive role in protecting and marketing the product. It increasingly has an active role in processing, preserving and in retaining the safety and quality of food throughout the distribution process. In order to improve the performance of packaging in meeting these varied demands, innovatively modified and controlled-atmosphere packaging, active and smart packaging systems are being developed, tested and optimized in laboratories around the world (Ahvenainen, 2003). There are many types of active packaging widely used in Europe such as oxygen scavenger packaging, time-temperature indicators and moisture absorption packaging. Since Malaysia has varieties of food production and Malaysian consumers prefer to use plastic as packaging tools, active packaging is a suitable technology to be implemented and has big potential in commercialization.