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Consumer literature shows that a decision's degree of personal importance and relevance--one's level of involvement in the decision--indicates which type of intervention strategy will be effective in influencing consumers' choices. The authors surveyed 358 college students at a state university in the western United States to test the applicability of involvement on issues of obesity and eating habits. They found food decisions to be of greater personal importance and relevance to female students than to their male counterparts. The results suggest that efforts to address levels of obesity and being overweight among male college students must recognize that men's food choices are very much rooted in the ideology of what it means to be female and male in contemporary American society. The authors advance 5 peripheral-route intervention strategies to augment existing cognitive-oriented, information-based intervention programs.

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This study discusses specific marketing strategies for two broad groups of consumers with radically different approaches to food selection. For over three decades strategies aimed at improving food choices assumed that providing nutritional information would change eating behaviors. We show that this strategy is only effective for consumers, a largely female group, already highly interested in the nutrient density and subsequent healthfulness of their food choices. In contrast, the nutritional information strategy does not change the food choices for those who have low interest in their food's nutrition, a group that is overwhelmingly male. These gender differences when making food choices are an opportunity for foodservice providers to implement a ‘dual‐track’ marketing strategy that can expand their customer base and increase their revenue while still meeting emerging nutrition mandates. In addition, this new approach will help address the nation's obesity epidemic.