Testing the Comprehensibility: Designing a Simplified Philippine Consumer Product Warnings

Abstract

Processing marketplace information sometimes placed the consumers at risk because this situated them in decoding the product warnings using string of mental strategies which delayed their acts in emergency response discourse. This research adheres to the legal compliance of Consumer Act of the Philippines or Republic Act 7394 which simplification of the language used in product safety information is designed to make it more comprehensible, readable, and consumer friendly. Conducting experimental study, 50 mother-consumers served as respondents who took the pre-testing of the present product warnings. Similarly, they were the same respondents who were given the post-examination based on the simplified warning messages of medicines, household chemicals, and beauty products through cloze-test. The results disclosed that all items from the three categories of simplified texts incurred 100 percent amplification of comprehensibility scores among mothers. Importantly, data determined that mothers’ repetitive reading did not consume much of their time in comprehending the texts. It is an indication that simplified cautionary texts can help the consumers in becoming independent readers who can autonomously respond correctly to the text at hand, specifically in times of emergency or urgent situations.

Keywords: Product warnings, simplified messages, comprehensibility, emergency situation

DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/90-07

Publication date:September 30^th 2023