The retail food environment plays an important role in shaping dietary habits that contribute to obesity and other chronic diseases. Food and beverage manufacturers use trade promotion—incentives paid to retailers—to influence how products are placed, priced, and promoted in stores. This review aims to: (1) catalogue trade promotion practices that manufacturers use to influence retailer marketing strategies, and (2) describe how these retailer marketing strategies affect consumer purchasing behavior and attitudes. Researchers searched five databases, Academic Search Ultimate, Business Source Ultimate, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science, to identify literature from industry and academic sources published in English through November 2019. Twenty articles describing manufacturer trade promotion practices were synthesized and provided insight into four types of trade promotion practices: category management, slotting allowances, price discounts, and cooperative advertising. Fifty-four articles describing the impact of retailer marketing on consumers were synthesized and graded for quality of evidence. While comparison across studies is challenging, findings suggest that retailer marketing strategies, such as price promotions and prominent placement, lead to increased sales. Results can guide efforts by policymakers, public health practitioners, and food retailers to design retail environments that improve healthy eating while maintaining retailer financial interests. Additional research should measure the impact of retailer marketing strategies on consumer diet quality and retailer outcomes (e.g., return-on-investment).

This article presents the evolution of a comprehensive participatory coalition evaluation model and a workbook that emerged from a 6-year Healthier Communities initiative in New Mexico. Despite the explosion of interest in a new paradigm for coalition evaluation, few models in the literature encompass coalition effectiveness, capacity and health outcomes, and a dynamic process of community participation. The New Mexico model features a participatory evaluation process that emphasizes community system changes and population health changes. Several community case stories illustrate the difficulties and potentials of using the participatory evaluation model. Lessons learned include the need for guiding principles so that issues such as power relationships and collaborative decision making are “above board,” understanding the complexity of coalition evaluation, the need to clarify evaluator roles to enhance buy-in, the use of a logic model to clarify a common vision of change, and the importance of using community-friendly, jargon-free language.

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