On a routine grocery store trip, Jane fills her cart with a variety of healthy foods, from sugar-free cereal to reduced-sodium soup. Jane perceives herself to be a healthy eater, but as she makes her way down an aisle, her eye falls on her favorite flavor of salty, fried potato chips on a buy-one-get-one-free sale. She grabs two bags without a second thought.

Minakshi Trivedi, the J. Vaughn and Evelyn H. Wilson professor of marketing and department chair in the Neeley School of Business, researches how individual consumers react to digital marketing campaigns. Photo by Joyce Marshall

An interest in how consumers make food-shopping decisions led Minakshi Trivedi, the J. Vaughn and Evelyn H. Wilson professor of marketing and department chair in the Neeley School of Business, to look at the disconnect between the public’s desire to make healthy choices and the realities reflected by their purchases.

Trivedi, who is also director of Neeley’s Research, Sales and Customer Insights Center, researches the ways individual consumers react to digital marketing efforts, which can be tailored to specific customer segments. In recent years, she also has studied policies to deter video game addictions and has looked at corporate health and wellness programs.

One study, “Impact of Healthy Alternatives on Consumer Choice: A Balancing Act,” published in the Journal of Retailing in 2016, sought to develop retail marketing strategies and public policy to encourage healthy food consumption.

Using a $25,000 grant from the University at Buffalo, Trivedi, along with co-researchers Karthik Sridhar, assistant professor of marketing and international business at Baruch College in New York, and Ashish Kumar, assistant professor of marketing at Aalto University in Finland, focused on how consumers view their dietary choices and how in tune actual shopping habits are with this perceived persona.

“Retailers, manufacturers and managers are realizing that if we want to speak to the consumer, then we’re going to have to carve out a message that speaks directly to them.”
Minakshi Trivedi

The researchers found that blanket healthy eating campaigns are not effective because people respond to different messages. “That’s what today’s marketing is all about,” Trivedi said. “It’s about understanding the consumer, their needs, and trying to meet those needs.”

The study’s findings were based on two years of data that tracked purchases and matched them with survey responses that reflected demographic data and consumer preferences. Researchers estimated healthy eating attitudes by assessing responses to statements such as “Whenever I buy a new food product, I check its nutritional information,” and “In general, I prefer to eat low-fat foods.”

Researchers identified fat, salt and sugar in the products they tracked. These elements provided a common context for products that offer healthy and regular alternatives. Sampled products included two types of milk, yogurt, butter, crackers and ice cream.

The study found that grouping consumers into healthy, balanced and hedonic eaters was the best way to market healthy options. Researchers proposed that the previous one-size-fits-all marketing strategy was ineffective compared to tailoring strategies to people in the specific segments.

“Retailers, manufacturers and managers are realizing that if we want to speak to the consumer, then we’re going to have to carve out a message that speaks directly to them,” Trivedi said. Technology — from Facebook ads to apps that deliver location-based notifications — allows marketers to customize messages.

The researchers identified manufacturers, retailers, government agencies and health professionals that have a stake in promoting healthy consumption. Trivedi said stakeholders must understand the public’s desire to balance food choices.

People try to mix healthy and regular food options using compensatory theory — trading one thing for another, she said. This explains Jane’s choice to buy low-sodium crackers and frosted cookies.

Minakshi Trivedi along with two co-researchers found that blanket campaigns are not effective for every consumer because different people connect with different messages. Photo by Joyce Marshall

Finding a balance in healthy versus regular food options is complicated, the researchers said. People can have an optimistic perception of their diets, often overestimating the number of healthy choices they make. This is reflected in Jane’s perceived notion that she is a healthful eater despite her tendency to mindlessly grab a bag of greasy potato chips.

“We always find that there are people who purchase healthy, unhealthy and some people who fall in the middle,” Sridhar said. “But when we try to look at purchases across multiple categories, we find that people who purchase healthy in one category tend to purchase unhealthy in other categories.”

Trivedi agreed: “There are people who think they’re making very healthy, balanced choices and living a very healthy lifestyle, but when it actually comes down to it, there are other ways [fat, salt and sugar are] getting into their foods and affecting that balance.”

Sridhar noted that the ethical role of the marketer in this situation goes beyond generating profits and into creating health-driven communities. “Healthy eating habits lead to healthy families,” he said. “Healthy families have [less] money spent on ailments and medicines. That becomes disposable income to help the family move forward and regenerate the economy.”

The researchers shared suggestions for stakeholders regarding promotions on certain products to maximize the impact on healthy consumption. “For example, a promotion on healthy crackers will impact the sale of healthy soups positively [by] 72 percent,” the researchers wrote. And using individualized messages in marketing will help people like Jane be more mindful of what they put in their grocery carts.