Details

Purpose: The purpose is to showcase a) innovative interventions that are unique to online food retail environments and b) the benefits of online food retail platforms for testing more broadly applicable policy actions to promote healthy diets.

Rationale: Online food retail has grown rapidly over recent years, accelerating even faster since the Covid-19 pandemic. The online retail platform offers new possibilities for nudging consumers towards healthier diets, including options that are not possible in physical grocery formats, such as peer-comparison messaging or creating default shopping carts stocked with fruits and vegetables. Online food retail environments also offer the ability to design and test policies in a more realistic setting where consumers are exposed to a wide array of products with real prices and check-out options (i.e., the experience is more reflective of actual food purchasing behaviors). Yet, the impact of uniquely-online food retail interventions is not well understood, and online store technology has rarely been used in lower- and middle-income settings.  

Objectives: 1) To showcase unique online food retail interventions for promoting healthier choices; and 2) to highlight the methodological innovations of using online food retail platforms for testing policy interventions more broadly, including in diverse global settings.

Summary: Lindsey Smith Taillie (USA) will introduce the topic and provide an overview, including global trends in online food retail, socio-demographics of online shoppers, and comparisons to brick-and-mortar stores with regards to food availability, affordability, and marketing. To accomplish Objective #1, Soye Shin (Singapore) will provide results from their study testing peer-comparison messaging and use of financial incentives on food choices in an online food retail setting. Then, Pasquale Rummo (USA) will discuss results from an online intervention that included default shopping carts coupled with financial incentives. To accomplish Objective #2, Ana Clara Duran (Brazil) will discuss results from the development of the first online grocery store experimental platform in Brazil and its use for testing front-of-package labeling policies. We will follow with a discussion for participants to provide examples from their own research using online food retail platforms. Participants will leave with a better understanding of what novel interventions can be developed using online food retail platforms as well as methodologically how to build an online food retail platform and use it in dietary research.

Format: Lindsey Smith Taillie, chair (5 minutes); Soye Shin (15 minutes); Pasquale Rummo (15 minutes); Ana Clara Duran (15 minutes); discussion (25 minutes).

Speaker