Purpose: To establish the use of retail loyalty card and large-scale transaction data as a dietary evaluation tool and explore how these data can be utilised in co-designing trials to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioural levers in influencing dietary choices utilising. 

Rationale:  

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis of the role of food environments in shaping individual behaviours. As such, the narrative for changing dietary behaviours has moved away from individual responsibility to organisational and government driven societal interventions which have the capacity to alter aspects of our environment to make them more health-promoting. The emergence of retailer provided loyalty card and transaction data allow us to evaluate dietary purchasing behaviour at scale and across wide ranging populations.  The Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) have identified five behaviour change levers (signposting, placement, product, influence and incentivisation), many of which underpin international policy, and can be used in retail stores to subtly nudge consumers towards healthier and more sustainable dietary purchase behaviours.

This symposium explores the role or loyalty card and transaction data in capturing these behaviours in a Finnish population. Before going on to detail a series of co-design trials with UK retailers utilising these data to investigate the effectiveness of behaviour change levers at scale, whilst simultaneously ensuring that the interventions are pragmatic and implementable in a commercial setting. By looking at total purchasing behaviours we can assess the overall impact to the basket and unintended consequences of interventions. In this session we will discuss the shared learnings from working with these data and the research co-design process with retailers. Reflecting on how the results can be utilised by the commercial sector and government to positively influence purchasing choices.   

Objectives:  

1) To demonstrate the value in co-designing studies and trials in the retail setting to investigate dietary choice behaviour  

2) To present results of trials and evaluations to date 

3) To discuss the strengths, limitations, and recommendations for conducting co-produced research