The balancing act of health vs taste

Faced with a barrage of nutritional information and advice, how do consumers make choices when shopping for food? Researchers aiming to untangle the apparent disconnect between stated health concerns and actual food purchases have found evidence of ‘balancing behaviour’ as consumers endeavour to offset health concerns while still purchasing the food they enjoy.

Academics analysed scanner data and survey responses from several hundred supermarket shoppers to see whether and to what extent consumers consciously balanced their health concerns with their food preferences when filling their shopping baskets.

The authors grouped consumers into three segments, based on their attitudes and concerns: health-driven, balanced and hedonic. When faced with healthy or unhealthy choices — which the study based on the level of fat, sugar or salt — the segments showed distinct variations in characteristics, purchasing behaviour and response to marketing mix variables such as price and discount. Each group made trade-offs on the healthy/unhealthy mix to varying extents based on its priorities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the data showed a marked difference between stated and actual behaviour.

The results, published as ‘Impact of Healthy Alternatives on Consumer Choice: A Balancing Act’ in the Journal of Retailing, found evidence that has implications for retail strategies as well as for public policy.

Retailers can use this research as guidance regarding which products to bundle for promotions and which element of the bundle to promote in order to maximise the impact on healthy consumption, the authors suggest. They further recommend that it is imperative for government agencies to understand actual consumer behaviour in order to successfully promote healthy eating.