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Summary meeting 9 Consumer Understanding and Behaviour HFV1003
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Summary meeting 9 Consumer Understanding and Behaviour HFV1003
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Meeting 9: nudgingSOURCE: DALLAS
Calorie labelling on restaurant menus is a policy tool used in the US to combat obesity. However,
little effect is found and this calorie labelling is called a policy failure.
How calorie information is typically presented helps explain the intervention’s failure, since
calorie labels are currently placed to the right of the food item on the menu! This
presentation might lead to calorie information to be processed later in the decision process
(Americans read from left to right), diminishing its effect on food choices.
When consumers are presented with multiple pieces of information about a product, the first
piece of information is generally given disproportionate weight in consumers’ evaluations.
Hypothesis = displaying calorie information to the left (vs. right) of food items will lead to
significantly lower calorie orders. We suggest that a key reason is because calories in the left position
are viewed/processed earlier by consumers in the food decision-making process—given that
Americans read from left-toright—which increases the weight they place on caloric information when
ordering.
Studies
Study 1
Objective: tests whether presenting calorie information to the left (vs. right) of menu items decreases
calories ordered in a field setting in which consumers make real food choices.
Method: conducted in chain restaurant.
- Manipulation calorie labelling: paper menu
o Left calories
o Right calories
o No calories
- Measurement calorie order: participants were asked to circle the items they were planned to
order.
Results: participants ordered significantly fewer calories in the left calories condition than in the no
calories condition and in the right calorie condition. There was no significant difference in calories
ordered between the right calories and no calories conditions.
Study 2
Objective:
- Test whether our processing order account could explain why calorie information to the left
(vs. right) of items leads to lower calorie orders.
- Test an alternative novelty account (i.e., calories to the left [vs. right] is more novel, and this
novelty increases the effectiveness of the calorie information).
Methods: only participants currently hungry and interested in purchasing a meal were eligible to
participate. Participants imagined that they were at a restaurant and were told that they would have
20s to order an entree and beverage.
- Manipulation calorie labelling (IV): menu was presented, the order of the items was
randomized across participants.
o Calories left
o Calories right
- Measurement calorie order (DV)
, - Measurement weight placed on calorie information (mediator): all participants answered this
statement: Please indicate the extent to which each of the following factors influenced your
choice of entree: taste, size, price, healthiness, value, hunger, calories. (1 = Not at all, 7 =
Very much so). The calories item was intended to measure the weight that consumers placed
on the calorie information when deciding what to order.
- Measurement novelty calorie presentation (alternative mediator): participants were asked:
How novel (i.e., new or unusual) was the way in which the calorie information was presented
on the menu you ordered from?
Results:
- American participants order significantly fewer calories when calories are displayed to the
left (vs. right) of food items.
- The effect of calorie position on the weight place on the calorie information when deciding
what to order was significant, as was the effect of the weight placed on the calorie
information on number of calories ordered. Indeed, a test of mediation revealed that the
weight placed on the calorie information mediated the effect of calorie position on number
of calories ordered.
- Perceived novelty did not mediate the effect of calorie position on number of calories
ordered.
Study 3
Objective: testing the same left versus right position manipulation with a different sample of
participants who naturally read from right-to-left (rather than from left-to-right as Americans do),
namely Hebrew speaking Israelis.
Method: Participants imagined ordering their next meal at a restaurant, which they were told was an
American restaurant opening its first branch in Israel. Participants were not forced to make their
choices in a fixed time period (unlike study 2).
- Manipulation calorie labelling: the order in which the menu items were presented was
randomized across participants.
o Left calories
o Right calories
o No calorie information
- Measurement calorie order
Results: participants ordered significantly fewer calories in the calories to the right condition than in
the no calories condition and in the calories to the left condition. There was no significant difference
in calories ordered between the no calories and left calories conditions.
Thus, the order in which calorie information is processed appears key, rather than the mental
congruency or novelty of the calorie information’s position.
, TIP: MOVE CALORIE INFORMATION TO THE LEFT OF THE MENU!
Future research directions
- Investigate the possible moderating effects of individual differences and situational factors.
o Individual differences: the effect of calorie position might emerge mainly among
consumers with a health goal and those who do not hold a strong healthy = not tasty
intuition.
o Situational factors: situational factors that activate a health goal may increase the
effect of calorie position, whereas factors that activate an indulgence goal may
decrease the effect (or, perhaps, even reverse it).
- Investigate other visual cues that lead to healthier choices. One possibility is that more
attention-grabbing visual cues (i.e., traffic lights, letter grades) swamp the effect of calorie
positioning, whereas subtler changes (i.e., ordering menu items from low-to-high calories)
make calorie information, particularly to the left of menu items, especially easy to-use,
facilitating even lower calorie orders.
- Future research should examine the long-term effect of altering calorie label position, and
whether lower calorie choices from a menu with calories to the left are compensated by
subsequent higher calorie intake.
SOURCE: ROMERO
Individuals hold a generalized system of magnitude representation in which dimensions such as time
duration, number magnitude, and spatial extent are mentally organized in increasing magnitude from
left to right. In the context of foods, a healthy item is perceived to be less heavy, lower in calories,
less filling, and even less tasty than an unhealthy item. Since stimuli of lower magnitude tend to be
mentally organized on the left and those of higher magnitude tend to be mentally represented on
the right, we propose that consumers naturally represent healthy items to the left of unhealthy
items.
- Body specificity theory = individuals link desirable products to their dominant side and
undesirable products to their non-dominant side. Incidentally, about 90% of the world
population is right-handed. Since consumers often deem unhealthy (vs. healthy) foods as
inducing more favorable affect as well as being more desirable and tempting, most
individuals should mentally associate unhealthy foods with the right lateral field.
- Ease of processing = food displays that are congruent (vs. incongruent) with consumers’
mental representation should facilitate greater ease of processing. Moreover, ease of
processing should enhance self-control and facilitate resistance to temptation, which in turn
should lead to a higher likelihood of choosing healthier options
Hypothesis = choice likelihood of the healthier option will be higher when the healthy items are
displayed laterally to the left (vs. right) of unhealthy items.
Studies
Study 1a: display positions of healthy and unhealthy items
Method: between subject-design using online participants.
- Manipulation item display: participants see menu with several food options
o Healthy-left, unhealthy right condition
o Healthy-right, unhealthy left condition
- Measurement food choice
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