The power dynamics of consumerism is an important aspect of contemporary consumer culture. Within the field of marketing and consumption, consumer culture theory (CCT) tends to understand power in terms of agency, the ability of consumers to emancipate from a market infused by the culture of consumerism. As such, CCT assumes a repressive hypothesis of power, as if consumerism was an external reality from which agentic consumers can escape by acts of dialectical opposition. In contrast, through a Foucauldian approach, the present study emphasizes the productive side of power, arguing that consumerism operates beyond dialectical oppositions to constitute consumption at different levels of scale – at the macro, meso and micro levels. More specifically, through qualitative data generated from official documents and interviews with state agency officials, consumers, and food manufacturers and retailers, the study undertakes a discourse analysis of date labeling in the food market. In accounting for the regulative, organizational and performative dimensions of consumption, the case of date labeling makes it possible to study consumerism at the intersection of the state, business and consumers. The study argues that consumption is constituted through a multiplicity of mundane power struggles that arise in the wake of date labeling. As such, it extends previous approaches by suggesting an extra-dialectical theory of consumer culture. Further, it argues that date labeling reinforces the mind/body dualism of consumerism by privileging cognition and choice at the cost of the human embodiment and sensory perception. It concludes that empowered performativity does not represent a negation of power, but that it emerges as a product of power and the consumerist attempt to constitute effective, predictable, responsible and controlled consumption. However, future research should continue studying the dominant institutional conditions of particular consumption contexts.

Increasing amounts of food waste is becoming a problem in developed countries. This research project is about how to reduce food waste by tracking fridge inventory and the best-before date of fridge stored food by a smartphone application. Food waste occurs in several different ways. It can be found in the household, retail stores and in the catering and events sector. Food waste can also be classified as avoidable waste, possibly avoidable waste and unavoidable waste. This project focuses on the household sector and the use of a mobile application to track fridge inventory and best-before date. The purpose of the application is to try to reduce household food waste. There is previous research about reducing household food waste using mobile applications and they all take different approaches. This study focuses on building upon these previous approaches together with data gathered from our own questionnaire with Sweden as primary focus. The combined data results in our own mobile application solution that has been tested by users in Swedish households. The study’s research question is addressed by the use of the application during a period of one-week observation. Our data collection consists of the participants being interviewed at the end of the observation period. The interviews gathered information related to whether the users successfully reduced food wastage in their households.

The objective of this thesis is to advance our understanding of how consumers use date labels and the implications of date-label use for household dairy product waste. It does this by investigating the effect of psychological, social, and contextual factors on date-label use and willingness to consume dairy products in relation to the expiry date. These effects are tested using structural equation models and survey data gathered from 548 Scottish consumers. The results of this study make two contributions to the literature on date-labelling and food waste. The first contribution is primarily theoretical. By improving our understanding of how consumers use date labels and the implications of date-label use for household dairy product waste, it supports the contention that food waste is best understood, not as a behaviour, but as the outcome of multiple behaviours. It argues that in order to understand why food waste is created, it is important to identify the factors that affect the individual behaviours that lead to it, such as date-label use, and how these behaviours relate to one another. These results also have implications for communications and campaigning around food waste reduction. The second contribution has policy relevance. It provides evidence of the likely limited effect of increasing the number of dairy products labelled with a best-before date rather than a use-by date on food waste. This is an approach recently proposed to reduce household food waste. It finds that better knowledge of the best-before date is associated with a higher willingness to consume products after the best-before date has passed. However, perceived risks about consuming products beyond their best-before date, including not just safety but quality, freshness, and social acceptability, appear to interact with date-label knowledge and dampen its influence. It argues that to be effective, any changes in date-labelling should be accompanied by communication that goes beyond improving date-label knowledge, and addresses the multifaceted nature of related risk perceptions and conceptions of date-label trust.

The thesis is concerned with a basic fact about the issue of food waste in a global level and in the Czech Republic as well. It Describes the overall problem and distinguishes a terminology of food loss, food waste etc. The practical part analyzes the consumption of food consumers via questionnaire in the region of Tabor. The goal was to determine whether the respondents are knowledgeable in this matter another aim was to find out the frequency of their purchase and consumption of food in their homes or how they liquidate the remaining food. The challenge is also to propose the own solution of this problem, because waste represents a complex economic, environmental, social and ethical problem. The final part deals with its own proposals for solutions and it finds out the need to establish food banks in the region of Tabor.