Seduced by a
label Supermarkets and food manufacturers are masters in manipulating our buying patterns. Can and do they want to seduce us into a healthier and more sustainable pattern of consumption? Arjen van Lin analyzes the effect of labels, nutritional values, and large price discounts on what we put in our shopping carts.
Text by Sebastiaan van de Water
A
young woman in a waisted jacket stands in front of a bin full of blue plastic packets. Her pursed lips betray doubt. The contents of these shiny bags have little to do with the ideal of sustainable wholefoods. Yet here is an opportunity that cannot be missed, according to a white-and-orange sign with the image of a rodent. These are the “ham ster weeks”. And so, at this Albert Heijn XL supermarket in Tilburg, Unox instant noo dles are “buy one get one free”. These kinds of large price discounts are an important weapon for Albert Heijn, as Arjen van Lin, Assistant Professor of
arketing at Tilburg University, knows. M “Albert Heijn is not an EDLP supermarket. So, they don’t have ‘everyday low prices’, but rather, they use the hi-lo format. They attract customers with extreme discount promotions, hoping that they will also fill their shopping carts with more expensive items.” But Albert Heijn’s tactics are under attack. “The British government has asked supermarket chains to stop all buy-oneget-one-free promotions,” says Van Lin. “The fear is that people will be tempted to buy more than they can eat, after which they throw out the remains.” But is this assumption correct? Van Lin and his fellow researchers have analyzed the buying and throwing-out behavior of households. “Our data suggest that people
22 | New Scientist | Tilburg University Economics and Management | Research Special
