Marketing tactics in grocery stores and how they influence the choice of a healthy diet

Affordable diets are a guiding principle in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) definition of sustainable healthy diets. This principle is mirrored in the Sustainable Nutrition Initiative’s iOTA Model®, which uses constraints such as price, emissions, and difference from current dietary habits to find nutritionally adequate diets. Yet one factor that is often overlooked when considering sustainable healthy diets is supermarket marketing. Supermarkets employ various tactics, which raises an important question: do supermarket marketing strategies make a healthy, sustainable diet less attainable? 

Marketing and promotion  

Supermarkets employ point of sale promotional strategies to alter consumer behavior, such as: 

• Price promotions which include temporary discounted prices, multibuy offers (buy one get one free deals) and bulk buy deals, designed to create a perception of value. This speaks to one of the main decision factors for consumers: price. 

• Supermarket shelving contains three distinct levels: eyes, hands and feet. A customer’s attention will naturally go to products placed at eye-level, and this shelving space is often given to the most profitable brands. This does not only apply to paying customers but also accompanying children, with specific products being placed at a child’s eye level. 

• Product placement throughout the supermarket can be divided into two zones: hot and cold. Hot zones are high-foot-traffic areas such as the checkout, entry or exit. Products in hot zones are typically impulse purchases. Cold zones, such as less populated areas toward the back of the store, are where planned purchases including essential and staple products are often found. 

• The atmosphere of a supermarket can also influence shopper behavior, primarily through music, lighting and visual effects. Music affects the pace of shoppers, with fast paced music increasing their speed and slower paced decreasing it. Lighting and visual effects can be used to draw attention to specific products and influence the way consumers perceive them. 

Relationship between marketing tactics and nutrition  

To discuss the impacts of these tactics on the population diet, we must first define “unhealthy” foods.  WHO’s recommendations on healthy eating suggests low intakes of foods with high trans-fat, sugar and sodium content in relation to their energy content. These items generally have higher profit margins with many retailers reporting candy and soda as their highest profit items. 

The high profit margin on unhealthy products means they are commonly found in supermarket hot zones including checkouts and end of aisle displays, increasing their visibility and accessibility. Sales of these products are further encouraged with a disproportionate number of price promotions targeting unhealthy foods.  

Many of these items are placed at children’s eye level. Children are less aware of marketing ploys; however, they are good at influencing their parents’ decisions. 

The store atmosphere has a less direct influence on dietary choices. For example, quieter music volumes have been associated with healthier purchasing behaviours, while louder music increased sales of unhealthy products. By slowing down shoppers using slow paced music, supermarkets can extend the duration of visits, increasing the likelihood of additional purchases. In contrast, lighting and visual effects can guide consumers to purchase healthier products like fruit and vegetables by enhancing their fresh appearance. 

What can supermarkets do to promote healthy diets? 

While a range of interventions have been tested in supermarkets to encourage healthier diets, the most common problem is doubts from retailers about the impact on their profits. Although many brands promote healthy eating, profit is still the main priority. One way to combat this is finding low cost, low maintenance interventions that encourage healthy eating, such as: 

• Labelling shelves with helpful nutritional content (high sugar, low sodium, etc.)

• Focused price promotions on healthier foods such as fruit and vegetables.

• Replacing unhealthy foods at checkouts and end of aisle displays with fruit and healthy snack packs. 

Of these three interventions, the most effective has shown to be shelf labelling. Labelling makes knowledge about the nutritional value of the product more accessible for consumers, highlighting valuable nutritional information without customers having to look at the product label. This intervention led to a decrease in sales of items high in trans-fat and sugar and low in fiber. The effectiveness of the shelf-labelling approach increased when used alongside supporting material including displays and fliers.     

Focused price promotions have been trialed to increase the number of purchases of healthy products using store wide discounts. This was often used on fruit and vegetables with promotions ranging from buy one get 1 free to a 15% discount for all loyalty card members. These interventions increased fruit and vegetable sales but had no clear results on decreasing the sales of unhealthy products. From a retailer’s perspective, the feasibility of promoting healthy items is questionable. Although the stores in many studies tended to support the initiative, manufacturers generally charge more for healthier products, causing many retailers to hesitate to promote them.  

Healthier supermarket layouts are the hardest intervention to implement. These interventions aim to replace unhealthy products placed in hot-zones with healthier alternatives. A decrease in unhealthy item sales was reported when this intervention was employed. However, when this method was performed exclusively at the checkout counters, there was negligible change in the sales of fruit and vegetables or confectionary items.  

What can consumers do  

In the absence of retailer adoption of healthy-eating initiatives, much weight falls on the consumer to make informed decisions about nutrition. This is made harder by the prevalence of marketing strategies steering customers to make the wrong choice, however there are a few ways to combat these strategies.  

Planning a shopping trip in advance has been shown to reduce the chances of impulse buys within the store. There are many ways this preparation can be done such as writing a shopping list or doing research on prices across stores. Preparation gives the shopper more agency during their shop, minimising their interaction with the store environment. 

Post-COVID, online shopping has become a popular alternative to heading into stores for many people. Online shopping has advantages if you are looking for a way to shop healthier: it lacks many of the marketing strategies discussed here (although others may appear in their place). However, it also has its disadvantages as online stores do not universally contain nutritional information that could be seen on physical labels in store. The impact of online shopping on dietary behavior is an ongoing area of research. 

Key takeaways 

Supermarkets have a significant influence on population dietary behaviours, yet many of their promotional strategies tend to favour unhealthy eating. Manufacturers often price unhealthy products low while marking up healthier options, making it challenging to encourage nutritious diets within the retail environment. In the absence of effective public policies or a shift in the priorities of both manufacturers and supermarkets, consumers must be wary against marketing tactics that promote unhealthy dietary choices. 

This Thought for Food was written by  our summer intern, Arlo Rea, with the support of the SNi team.