dynamics Constraining the obesity epidemic by understanding the role of healthy shopping

Constraining the obesity epidemic by

understanding the role of healthy shopping

dynamics

Sanne Schreurs

Master Thesis MSc. Marketing Management & Marketing Intelligence

First Supervisor: Prof. Dr. ir. K. van Ittersum

Introduction (1)

Globally, the number of obese individuals has increased from

921 million in 1980 to 2.1 billion in 2013

Being obese is an important risk factor and has a huge

impact on health care costs

Researchers expect the rates to even increase by 130% over

the next two decades

Given that over half of all food purchases are occuring in

Introduction (2)

Current research has focused on the healthiness of

single-product purchases

Results of a pilot study suggest the existence of healthy

shopping dynamics

Current research is insufficient and even

counterproductive in curbing the obesity epidemic

Research Questions

1. What are the drivers of the healthiness of the next

product purchase?

2. What are the drivers of the healthiness of the end of

trip basket?

Relevance

Healthy shopping dynamics may be one of the keys in

constraining the obesity epidemic

Investigates the presence and influence of healthy shopping

dynamics in real-life

Takes the whole grocery shopping process into account

Data

Data resides from Retailer Plus

Basket-level data, captured by hand-held scanners from

customers

Final dataset contained 5400 shopping trips covering week

1/6 of 2016 in three different Plus stores

Special events

• Week 1: customers are expected to have strong health

intentions

Methodology

Model 1: Healthiness next product purchase

• Dataset containing 5400 shopping trips

• Random effects panel regression

• Panel ID: Unique ID for each customer

• Time variable: Purchase number

Model 2: Healthiness end of trip basket

Results

Pre-liminary plots

Results model 1

Results model 2

Discussion & implications

Existence of Healthy Shopping dynamics

• Negative effect Nth purchase: losing self-control

• Negative effect sum healthiness: license to indulge

• Positive effect sum unhealthiness: guilt

Both effects are moderated by Nthpurchase

Other drivers of healthy shopping dynamics

• Negative effect of green health labels: ‘perceptions of healthy

category’?

Effect is moderated by Nthpurchase

Discussion & implications

Major shopping trips show healthier end of trip baskets

compared to smaller shopping trips

• Weekly family groceries – paying more attention to

healthiness?

Control variables

• Pre-liminary evidence of a positive effect of the health

intervention by Plus

Limitations & further research

‘Relative healthiness’ solely based on amount of calories

per 100 gram

Reasonably low adjusted R squares (16,47% and 2,2%)

No personal shopper information available

Results indicate a negative effect of green health labels

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