Point-of-Decision Prompts Increase Dietary Fiber Content of Consumers’ Food Choices in an Online Grocery Shopping Simulation

Abstract

Only 5% of Americans consume the recommended amount of dietary fiber. In an online simulated shopping experiment, we examined whether a fiber-focused point-of-decision prompt (PDP) would influence consumers to choose food products that were higher in this important nutrient. We hypothesized that participants exposed to the dietary fiber PDP would choose products with more dietary fiber/serving than those who were not exposed to the PDP. The experiment was completed by 753 participants. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition in which they were not exposed to a PDP (the no-PDP condition), a personalized PDP, or PDP without personalization. Choices in the two PDP conditions were not significantly different. Therefore, the PDP conditions were pooled together into one condition and compared with control participants that did not receive the fiber-focused PDP. Across the three product categories, participants in the PDP condition chose products that had a greater amount of dietary fiber/serving (cereal: 22% increase; bread: 22% increase; crackers: 26% increase; p < 0.01) and products that had a greater healthiness rating (cereals (odds ratio (OR): 1.45, 95% confidence interval (95% CI): (1.10, 1.92)), bread (OR: 1.44, 95% CI: (1.09, 1.91)), and crackers (OR: 1.66, 95% CI: (1.25, 2.21)). Overall, the fiber PDP influenced participants to choose healthier products that contained greater amounts of dietary fiber.

Digital Food Retail: Public Health Opportunities

“…Participants who received point-of-decision prompts for fiber chose products higher in fiber and with higher healthiness ratings compared with participants who did not receive any prompts. Findings from this study support the use of point-of-purchase nudging on online grocery platforms to stimulate healthy food purchases [34].…”

High BMI Predicts Attention to Less Healthy Product Sets: Can a Prompt Lead to Consideration of Healthier Sets of Products?

“…Disparities found between field and laboratory experiments in the impact of front-of-package labels may be a result of varying the number of items that individuals consider [ 50 , 51 , 52 ]. Our results have implications for this observation in two ways: First, initial research on interventions meant to promote healthier diets may need to occur in richer choice environments, such as the environment we examine in this research, and in two other recent articles [ 36 , 53 ]. These experiments allow participants to interact with the array of products in a more realistic manner, which may mean choosing not to view some products that are available, including labels/information that may be available on those products.…”

“…The results related to the prompt show promise in terms of promoting the consideration of healthier alternatives. Health prompts have been shown to encourage healthier choices in laboratory and field settings [ 35 , 36 , 54 , 55 ], and may work in part by recruiting parts of the brain that are important in self-control and accelerating the consideration of health attributes in food choices [ 54 , 55 ]. While we studied a prompt delivered in an online environment, other prompts have been shown to be effective in physical supermarket settings [ 34 , 35 ].…”

“…To examine how individuals of differing weight status reacted to a fiber information prompt, we randomized participants into control and one of two prompt conditions. The prompt messages varied only in their inclusion/exclusion of second-person pronouns, and did not result in differences in choice behavior [ 36 ], so we aggregated them into one condition. The prompt presented information about the health benefits of fiber, comprising weight management, reduction of disease risk, lowering of cholesterol, regulation of the digestive system, blood sugar control, and effects on the gut microbiome.…”

“…Research suggests that attention to nutrition information and health messaging is important in promoting healthy choices [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Intuitively, consideration of healthy products when making a purchase decision is also important, and is a necessary precondition to the purchase of healthy foods.…”