Point-of-Purchase Messages Framed in Terms of Cost, Convenience, Taste, and Energy Improve Healthful Snack Selection in a College Foodservice Setting
Section snippets
Study 1
Whereas entrées or whole meals have been the targets of previous POP interventions (4), our study focused on snack foods (13). Because students tend to snack frequently and have an array of snack food choices in cafeterias, snacks were considered an important target for intervention to improve overall diet quality (20) Four foods were targeted: fruits and vegetables, which tend to be underconsumed by students (2); pretzels, a lower-fat alternative to potato chips; and yogurt, which was targeted
Study 2
The primary purpose of Study 2 was to investigate the impact of a 2-week POP intervention that targeted a single snack food, yogurt, in order to examine the intervention's effects without bias from other preceding or antecedent POP promotions. It was hypothesized that yogurt sales would increase significantly from baseline to intervention, and from intervention to follow-up. A secondary purpose was to determine the extent to which customers saw, read, and were influenced by the POP messages. An
General Discussion
Although studies have produced mixed findings regarding the benefits of POP interventions in college foodservice facilities (6), (7), (8), (9), (10), our studies show that POP messages can increase healthful snack consumption. However, we suspect that the success of our intervention was largely due to the placement, graphics, and message content of our promotional materials. Specifically, a large, professionally designed poster was situated at the entrance to the cafeteria, and our POP messages
Applications/Conclusions
With respect to implementing POP interventions in university cafeterias, we offer several recommendations.
■ First, because the BEST properties are easy to understand, even persons who have no nutrition knowledge may be able to translate messages into specific eating behaviors when the intervention is framed with these characteristics (23). The BEST properties should be highlighted in brief POP messages.
■ Second, creative marketing techniques allow healthful food promotions to be noticed by a
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