Grocery retailers are joining the fray against obesity by offering a wide range
of health and wellness programs at the point of sale. However, the success of
such programs in promoting healthy choices remains an open question. The
authors examine the effectiveness of a growing health and wellness initiative:
a simplified nutrition scoring system. They present a conceptual framework that
predicts the effect of such a scoring system on shoppers’ food decisions and
their sensitivity to price and promotion, as well as the moderating influence of
category-level factors. Using a large-scale quasi experiment and panel data
across eight product categories for more than 535,000 members of a grocery
chain’s frequent shopper program, the authors demonstrate that the pointof-sale nutrition scoring system helped consumers make healthier food choices,
such that they switched to higher-scoring products in the postrollout period. The
results also reveal that shoppers became less price sensitive and more
promotion sensitive following the introduction of the food scoring system.
The authors discuss implications for research and practice.
Keywords: point-of-sale nutritional information, healthy eating, food
purchases, obesity, in-store decision making