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Preparing the path towards healthier choices

Insights | Food & Health

Foodvalley wants to improve the food system from a sustainability and health perspective. While government guidelines are in place for companies to reduce the use of salt, sugar and saturated fat reduction and increase fibre, these are not compulsory. So how can companies be incentivised to be sustainable and profitable, and get more healthy products on the shelves? What are the issues and challenges for stakeholders, from producers to consumers, to enable healthier products to really become a success?

Consumer behaviour roadblock

Vera Hoynck van Papendrecht, Foodvalley Programme Manager for Healthier Food, suggests that a large part of the challenge lies with the demand side. “Producers already have solutions to lower salt or saturated fat, but the product has to be accepted first by the vendor, the retailer or food service company and, second, by the consumer. Many healthier products are being developed but either the consumer doesn’t get it or the products fail to make the shelves. Why not? To find out, ‘The Healthier Food Community Meeting’ set out to learn from behavioural science about the consumer behaviour roadblock and identify the collective action that could stimulate healthier behaviour.”

Climbing the ladder

Rona van der Dussen, of Behavior Change Group, proposes that consumer behaviour resembles a ladder with a main abstract goal on top, in our case healthier food choices. Each step represents a specific behavioural step to be taken to reach the goal. But not everyone is on the same ladder and our brains are prewired by fundamental needs. Changing behaviour to make a healthy choice can be like asking consumers to swim upstream. They need to be guided towards healthier options, but we must first understand the mechanisms that underlie buying food and choosing diet. In the environment and infrastructure (including people) around us, key factors are product visibility, placement and price. To change the food environment, we must change the default: make the healthier option the default and enable people to gain the competence and belief to actually make the change. What about consumer resistance? This can be overcome by emphasising freedom of choice and thereby promoting a willingness to be influenced yet with the sense of autonomy intact. As for motives, this is sometimes a battle between healthy and unhealthy, with the latter being inherently pleasing. It is essential for product and communication to appeal to the motivation and narrative of the audience.

Bad news is good news

With this in mind, Theo Toering, CEO of Bamboo Brands, helps food manufacturers across Europe to innovate better with in-store market research based on consumer behaviour in the right context of actual purchase decisions, asking consumers about their observed behaviour rather than asking them to predict their future actions. “One of the main problems.” Theo says “is that innovators try to reduce risk and uncertainty of their innovations with opinion-based market research. But opinions are not a solid base for decision-making. You really need to dig in, to get consumer behaviour feedback. In an empirical situation you can look at real behaviour and get a much better analysis of buying behaviour.” When recently a large sweets brand introduced cardboard packaging to replace the plastic box, it had been preceded by excellent market research. Now this rollout has been stopped because sales fell. “I think it also has to do with a pretty traditional risk-free buying behaviour by consumers along with concern about the absence of an air-tight container and consequent loss of quality. Need outweighed innovation and sustainability. A key driver in consumer behaviour is individualism versus a better world. Better for you or better for me. Both elements need to be present for successful innovation. I want my customers to avoid the mistakes that lead to 80% failure rates. My message is usually ‘Congratulations, I’m bringing you bad news because you should not launch this product.’ Which is good news, in fact, because they can then avoid wasted time, money and energy. Ultimately, empirical consumer research – not the speculative questionnaires of marketeers – helps our clients to be more effective and achieve better, faster and more sustainable innovation.”

Putting tomato americain on the shelf

Albert van de Veen, along with his chef business partner, co-founded Groentegoed, a small scale-up that began life five years ago and three years later built its own factory. Together with two manufacturing employees, this small team produces spreads from vegetables, free of preservatives and sugars. “A healthy alternative for cheese or meat,” Albert says, “like the ‘tomato americain’ alternative to the meat variety. We can do the innovation but our challenge is to convince the retailer to get our product on the shelf – and in the place where the consumer can find and buy it. Knowing how to position your product for specific outlets. That’s one challenge.” As part of the Healthier Food community Albert can gain the essential marketing intelligence to start to tackle that challenge, as outlined in the aforementioned presentations that provide insight into retailer and consumer decision-making. “Another challenge is to shift the focus from publicising the negative aspects, such as warning consumers about problems with processed foods and so on, to what’s positive about making healthier choices. Being part of the Foodvalley community is not only good for networking and acquiring knowledge but also leveraging the potential power of that community to profile healthier choices and, consequently, help Groentegoed take the next step on its journey.”

“So, from a healthier food perspective, we should engage the consumer very actively, by setting up research experiments which really bridge the gap from theory to practice. We should engage consumers and see how we can both consciously and unconsciously guide them towards healthier choices. The message about what is healthy needs to be clear and convincing. We must work with the industry to get the message across in a clearer way so that different companies tell more or less the same story. Because what you see now is that companies, but also influencers, all tell different stories and people don’t know what the truth is anymore. This leads to inertia. Sharing the expertise is a start but we have to identify the things we can do collectively. Grow the community, connect parties one-on-one and small groups for pitching, sparring and exploring collaborations.”

Vera Hoynck van Papendrecht, Programme Manager Healthier Food
Collective consciousness

Since individual consumers may not easily change their behavior and companies are focused on financial stability and growth, Foodvalley can tackle the challenge by showcasing and developing cases that prove profitability in offering healthier products.
“We need to collectively unite and get industry parties to subscribe to this collective approach or message about healthier food and also take measures to promote that. It all comes down to strength in numbers,” Vera concludes, “a collective consciousness and taking action now.”