Healthy options ease minds

With the increase in obesity across the world, and particularly in developed countries, food businesses are developing and marketing healthier options. The fast food / quick serve businesses are a very visible example of this trend.

Quick service chains have now introduced grilled products and salads as part of their menu and are heavily promoting them. In the US, the franchisees of one of these quick service franchises have initiated court proceedings against the brand owner due to the current marketing campaign for the healthier foods on the menu.

Studies being done in the US have shown that when presented with healthy options in a quick service business, there is an increasing purchase of the traditional menu items. It seems that simply having the healthier choice on the menu is making people feel good and they don’t feel so bad about purchasing the chips and other traditional fried fare.

Consumers are looking for businesses to sell healthier options, but are not necessarily buying them. This is backed by increasing sales of traditional fried foods in businesses that are now offering the healthier grilled options.

It is an effect known as “vicarious goal fulfilment”. A person can feel that as long as they have considered a healthy option, they OK purchasing the traditional fried food, because they have met their goal of eating healthily by thinking about the health food.

In research done by Gavan Fitzsimons, a Professor of Marketing and Psychology at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, several versions of a lab experiment reinforced this effect. Professor Fitzsimons said; “There is clearly public demand for healthy options, so we wanted to know why people aren’t following through and purchasing those items. In this case (during the lab experiment), the presence of a salad on the menu has a liberating effect on people who value healthy choices. We find that simply seeing, and perhaps briefly considering, the healthy option fulfils their need to make healthy choices, freeing the person to give in to temptation and make an unhealthy choice.”

If the options are there, it is really up to the consumer to make the decision about what to purchase but if we are serious about reducing obesity in our society, then the health options should be the ones we are actually choosing.