Customer Purchase Intentions and Choice in Food Retail Environments: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Food purchasing and consumption behaviors have implications for nutrition and obesity. Food retail environments, in particular, shape customer food choices and energy intake. The marketing literature offers insights about how public health practitioners can work within food retail environments to encourage healthy food choices. We reviewed experimental studies in the marketing literature to examine factors influencing customer purchase intentions and choice for food products in retail stores. Database searches were conducted in February 2016 for original, empirical articles published in English from 2000–2015 in marketing journals. Each research article included at least one experimental design study conducted in a real or simulated retail environment with purchase intentions or choice of food products as an outcome variable. Backward and forward reference searches were conducted for articles meeting inclusion criteria. Narrative synthesis methods were used to thematically group and summarize the findings of forty-one articles that met inclusion criteria into three categories: shelf display and product factors, pricing and price promotion factors, and in-store and customer decision-making factors. This research contributes to the literature by providing specific and actionable approaches that can increase/decrease customer purchase intentions and choice for food products in retail environments. Translating marketing strategies into public health applications can provide recommendations for future intervention research and policy related to customer food purchasing behavior.

Mothers’ Vegetable Consumption Behaviors and Preferences as Factors Limiting the Possibility of Increasing Vegetable Consumption in Children in a National Sample of Polish and Romanian Respondents

“…The choice of food products and purchase decisions are influenced by a number of factors, including those related to health [47], nutritional knowledge [48], and the place where the product is purchased [49], but convenience and preferences may be the crucial ones [50]. This was confirmed by the results of a study by Horning et al [51], where it was observed that the common reasons for choosing pre-packed processed meals instead of non-processed ones are preferences and time.…”

Consumer Habits of Local Food: Perspectives from Northern Sweden

“…The products of the food and wine supply chain are considered elements that are capable of offering the tourist a direct expression of a culture, and can be capable of generating tourist flow. From a marketing point of view, the product can be promoted and used as a means of tourist and gastronomic attraction [88][89][90].…”

Evaluation of Store Environment Changes of an In-Store Intervention to Promote Fruits and Vegetables in Latino/Hispanic-Focused Food Stores

“…However, an alternative for future researchers interested in supermarkets food environment research is the use of simulated, or virtual, stores to test intervention strategies for eventual buy-in from supermarkets [10]. Additionally, formative research and/or adaptive intervention approaches should be conducted to understand how to influence product availability and placement within stores given previous evidence demonstrating the relationship between these dimensions and dietary behaviors [11,12,37,67]. One potential way to effectively manipulate multiple aspects of the in-store environment is by involving multiple partners [58,68].…”