Purpose – Only a limited number of studies have examined the behaviour and the strategies of children and parents during shopping. This ethnographical study aims at thoroughly understanding family decision-making when shopping for groceries, especially children's and parents' negotiation strategies. Design/methodology/approach – Using a qualitative ethnographical approach, seven known families were accompanied on 19 grocery shopping trips. Their behaviour, their interactions and their strategies during shopping were observed. Analysis was conducted by coding relevant information, defining categories, comparing data and identifying patterns. Findings – The results show that children constantly influence their parents, directly and indirectly. They do this by displaying various behaviours in the grocery store. Their negotiation tactics are diverse, as are parents' reactions to their children's negotiation strategies. Children aim at fulfilling spontaneous desires while parents want to restrain their children's requests. Research limitations/implications – Limitations of the study can be found in their qualitative methodology. Practical implications – This study has several implications for marketers. By learning about the joint decision-making process, companies as well as public policy makers will be able to address families more successfully and market healthy food more effectively. Originality/value – This study contributes to existing research on family decision-making by presenting different ways of children and parents behaviour during shopping trips. It applied an unusual technique of observing well-known families on their shopping trips.

Food marketing research shows that child-directed marketing cues have pronounced effects on food preferences and consumption, but are most often placed on products with low nutritional quality. Effects of child-directed marketing strategies for healthy food products remain to be studied in more detail. Previous research suggests that effort provision explains additional variance in food choice. This study investigated the effects of packaging cues on explicit preferences and effort provision for healthy food items in elementary school children. Each of 179 children rated three, objectively identical, recommended yogurt-cereal-fruit snacks presented with different packaging cues. Packaging cues included a plain label, a label focusing on health aspects of the product, and a label that additionally included unknown cartoon characters. The children were asked to state the subjective taste-pleasantness of the respective food items. We also used a novel approach to measure effort provision for food items in children, namely handgrip strength. Results show that packaging cues significantly induce a taste-placebo effect in 88% of the children, i.e., differences in taste ratings for objectively identical products. Taste ratings were highest for the child-directed product that included cartoon characters. Also, applied effort to receive the child-directed product was significantly higher. Our results confirm the positive effect of child-directed marketing strategies also for healthy snack food products. Using handgrip strength as a measure to determine the amount of effort children are willing to provide for a product may explain additional variance in food choice and might prove to be a promising additional research tool for field studies and the assessment of public policy interventions.

No abstract

Purpose – Altering eating habits are leading to an increase in child obesity rates, especially in lower social class. One possible prevention activity is the implementation of a quality label for children's food. Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate parents' food choice criteria in light of social standing to deduce the possible impact of such a quality label. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 15 qualitative interviews were conducted with parents of different social class. Topics discussed were general diets, grocery shopping behaviour and attitudes towards food quality labels. Findings – Results indicate that parents have similar choice criteria independent of their social class, e.g. quality, price, brand and children's preferences. Nutrition panels and quality labels are not of highest importance. Nonetheless, a need for information exists and their involvement in child nutrition seems to determine the possible impact of quality labels. Research limitations/implications – The qualitative methodology can be seen as a limitation of the study. The influence of involvement has to be further analysed. Originality/value – Some research on the influence of quality labels in general and on family decision-making when shopping for food and with regard to differences in social class does exist. This study contributes to existing research by combining these research streams.

No abstract