Recent research from the U.S. shows that many people not only believe that healthy food is more expensive than less healthy food. Conversely, they would also make this connection: “It is more expensive, so it is healthier.”
“The healthiest protein bar in the world”
It nicely ties in with yesterday’s article about added sugars to jars of vegetables. Making assumptions about the healthiness of food based on incorrect data. Looking at the picture on the can instead of the ingredients when it comes to canned vegetables, for example. Price of food turns out to be another incorrect indicator people use to gauge how healthy food is.
Researchers from three different American universities will soon publish the results of their research in the Journal of Consumer Research. They wanted to test whether people indeed think that healthy food is more expensive. This was indeed demonstrated in their research. Not very surprising, we don’t say “cheap is expensive” for nothing when it comes to things other than food. However, this research showed that this can have rather strange effects when it comes to food.
They reached their conclusions by conducting multiple studies. In one of those studies, people were given two identical cookies to eat. However, they were told that one cookie was more expensive. When asked which cookie would be healthier, people thought that the more expensive cookie was healthier.
Conversely, in another study, it was told that one cookie was healthier than the other. As expected, people thought that the healthier cookie was more expensive.
Then they introduced a supposedly new protein bar that would be marketed as “the healthiest protein bar in the world”. The bar was supposed to compete with protein bars priced at $2. To the subjects who had to evaluate the bar, they provided reviews about the bar. If the protein bar cost $0.99, the subjects were inclined to read many more reviews than when the same bar cost $4.
“How is it possible that a cheaper protein bar is healthier than more expensive bars on the market?”
“Price weighs heavier for unknown products”
Not really a reason to ring the bells and run down the street shouting ‘Eureka’. Price is one of several factors in making a choice between products. If there is no difference in other factors as in the above studies (identical cookies), then you quickly rely on the only variable that exists.
However, the more we think we know about a product, the less weight price carries.
For example, in the choice of vitamin A and DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid) as a means for better eyes. Both were alternated at different heights on a price list. When asked how important DHA was for eye health, price was found to be a significant factor in that judgment. However, with vitamin A, the price was found to have much less influence in determining its importance for the eyes. Because vitamin A is more familiar than DHA, people think based on that knowledge they can make a choice regardless of price.
I say think because what we think we know is something different from what we actually know.
That’s why I find their ‘chicken wrap’ study most interesting. In that study, a choice was presented between two chicken wraps. From the names of the wraps, nothing could be inferred that indicated influence on health. However, the ingredients list of both was provided. When asked which wrap was healthier, price proved decisive. It didn’t matter what ingredients were in the wrap or which wrap had the highest price attached; the most expensive wrap was seen as the healthiest.
Did people simply not bother to examine the ingredients because they thought they knew that more expensive is healthier? Or did they carefully examine the ingredients, but didn’t know enough about nutritional values to judge?
Marketing Magic
What is again annoying is that one of the valid conclusions from the research is that producers can indeed benefit from asking higher prices for products that are to be sold as healthy.
One of the researchers, Rebecca Reczek, is a professor of marketing at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. She not only suggests that setting higher prices for healthy food can be a smart strategy for producers, but also that cheap food is not perceived as healthy.
If the food industry learns that healthy food must be expensive to be bought, this becomes a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Then healthy food becomes expensive, not because production is more expensive, but solely because of perception. However, you hope that competition will ensure that there is an alternative. So, you should not automatically dismiss that alternative because it is cheaper.
