Executive summary of “Can priming a healthy eating goal cause depleted consumers to prefer healthier snacks?”

Citation

(2014), "Executive summary of “Can priming a healthy eating goal cause depleted consumers to prefer healthier snacks?”", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 31 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM-03-2014-0892

Executive summary of “Can priming a healthy eating goal cause depleted consumers to prefer healthier snacks?”

Article Type: Executive summary and implications for managers and executives From: Journal of Consumer Marketing, Volume 31, Issue 2

This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the material present.Statistics reveal that obesity worldwide has increased significantly over the last three decades or so. Such weight problems are commonly assumed to increase the risk of contracting various illnesses and medical conditions including heart disease, diabetes and certain forms of cancer. One impact of this in the United States is huge increases in the cost of providing treatment for health issues linked to obesity.

Various factors have been identified as potential causes of obesity. Research indicates that being overweight can be genetic or the result of poor diet sometimes as a consequence of limited access to food which is both healthy and affordable. Physical inactivity is another reason often cited.

Growing attention is being paid to how environmental factors might make some contribution to obesity issues. The main focus in the present work is self-control, namely how failing to exert self-control will probably mean that inappropriate choices are made. In a context of deciding what to eat, the likelihood is that unhealthy options are selected rather than healthier alternatives. The rationale behind this expectation is that one choice may demand significantly greater psychological effort than the other. Cooking a meal at home as opposed to buying fast food is used to illustrate this point. In certain situations, individuals may have insufficient effort at their disposal and self-control failure is the outcome. This increases the likelihood that they will succumb to temptation.

Scholars have offered different theories as to why people might fail to apply self-control. The concept of depletion is prominent among these ideas. At the core of this model is the proposal that people have limited deposits of resources which relate to such as strength or energy. A key feature of this approach is the belief that using self-control to engage with one task will mean that insufficient resources are available when self-control is likewise required for any subsequent activity. Self-control failure is the likely outcome in these circumstances. Experiments conducted provide support for this assumption. In one instance, two groups were asked to collect products for a mock shopping activity. One group had to select predetermined goods, while the other could choose from different options on their list. The latter group reflected the depleted condition and indicated a greater likelihood of making unhealthy choices. Other work similarly reveals a link between depletion and self-control failure.

Researchers are consequently seeking ways in which this effect might be overcome and “nonconscious goal priming” is regarded as one possibility. Psychological research has shown that environmental cues can prompt people to make choices without any awareness on their part. Researchers found evidence of nonconscious goal priming in a task where subjects were presented with a list of scrambled words pertaining to either a “thrift goal” or a “prestige goal”. Frugal and luxury were respective examples of each. When subsequently asked to select either a prestigious product or a thrifty item, those exposed to words associated with a prestige goal mainly opted for the prestigious product. This suggests that nonconsciously priming subjects with words connected with a specific goal type can result in that goal being activated without subjects being aware of it. The model additionally argues that an “effortless process” to achieve the objective occurs once it is activated.

An important question to explore is whether cues relating to healthy eating activate the same healthy eating goals for both depleted and non-depleted consumers. This being the case, it could be possible for marketers to better influence consumer self-control. However, a different impact of priming on depleted people would likely indicate some limitations of its effects.

Further investigation of these issues was conducted using 93 students from a North American university. Subjects participated in an experiment in which they were assigned to one of four conditions combining depletion or non-depletion with nonconscious goal priming relating to healthy eating or no prime. Prior to the main experiments, students rated their mood, hunger, tiredness, commitment to healthy eating, performance in school and saving money.

Three ostensibly unrelated tasks were used for the experiment. The first served to manipulate depletion levels by asking respondents to cross out the letter “e” on a sheet of printed text. Additional conditions made this task more complex for certain subjects and the extra effort needed to complete it resulted in them becoming depleted. In the next stage, some participants were primed for a healthy-eating goal via a task involving sentence construction from scrambled words relating to health. Words unconnected to a health goal were used for other subjects. Shopping was the focus of the final task which measured self-control. Participants were told to imagine they were buying four items and had two possible options for each. A snack was one of the items and the choice was between a healthy granola bar and an unhealthy chocolate bar. Debriefing then took place and showed that no subjects were properly aware of between-task connections and purpose of the study.

The experiment indicated that:

task completion demanded greater effort in the depletion condition;

mood was not affected by depletion;

no significant difference was found across the four conditions for the impact of gender, hunger and commitment to healthy eating;

non-depleted subjects were likelier than their depleted counterparts to choose the healthy snack;

those primed with healthy eating words selected the healthy snack more often compared to those not primed with a healthy eating goal;

relative to the other conditions, non-depleted participants primed with the healthy eating goal picked the healthy snack considerably more; and

depleted subjects preferred the unhealthier chocolate bar in both no goal and healthy eating goal conditions.

Walsh et al. conclude that depletion makes it difficult for people to exercise self-control even when nonconsciously primed to pursue such goals. From this, it is argued that additional resources might be required to enable responses to be passively changed in this condition.

Marketers should recognize that being depleted is likely to impact on how health-related brand claims will be received by consumers. To combat this, the authors suggest that healthy foods are positioned in stores so that people will encounter them at the start of their shopping experience. They similarly point out the practice whereby many retailers locate unhealthy products near to the store entrance, meaning that the self-control of shoppers is tested. The resulting state of depletion means that consumers are unlikely to opt for healthy choices during the remainder of the activity. Those with responsibility for promoting healthy eating should therefore demand that unsuitable products are not located near to the store entrance.

The danger of excessive calorie intake through consuming large quantities of healthy food is another issue to consider. In the opinion of Walsh et al, efforts must be made to persuade consumers to pay closer attention to nutritional information when they are not depleted.

Extending this research to include different population segments is recommended, as is actual choice and consumption of healthy or unhealthy food as opposed to the laboratory experiment used here. How accessible self-control goals are might also be explored, along with potential moderators and personal attitudes towards health claims. Researchers could ascertain whether these findings apply to other issues like gambling, alcohol use, smoking and overspending.

To read the full article, enter 10.1108/JCM-09-2013-0697 into your search engine.(A précis of the article “Can priming a healthy eating goal cause depleted consumers to prefer healthier snacks?”. Supplied by Marketing Consultants for Emerald.)