Appetite

Available online 31 July 2012

In Press, Corrected Proof — Note to users

Evolutions in food marketing, quantifying the impact, and policy implications ^☆

• Georgina Cairns

• Institute for Social Marketing, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, United Kingdom

Available online 31 July 2012

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2012.07.016, How to Cite or Link Using DOI

Keywords

• Interactive digital marketing;
• Food marketing;
• Children;
• Monitoring and evaluation;
• Measuring effects;
• Marketing policy;
• Marketing co-creation;
• Marketing data

Introduction

Historically marketing theory and marketing control policy paradigms have cast marketers as the producers of marketing communications and consumers as the recipients of these communications (Wilkie & Moore, 2003). The emergence of interactive digital technologies is driving a rapid evolution from marketer-driven promotions aimed at consumers to interactive co-creational and user-generated marketing communications (Precourt, 2009).

This paper reports on a case study that examined the adequacy of current food marketing to children policies to control digitally mediated, interactive marketing of high fat, salt, sugar (HFSS) foods to children.

Interactive digital marketing

Interactive digital marketing (IDM) describes a broad range of communication platforms and tools, including mobile phone text and visual media messaging, social networking sites, product review websites, wikis, blogs, chat rooms, online gaming sites and websites hosting user generated content such as video, photos and consumer reviews. Digital technologies collect and process marketing-relevant personal data. This data can be aggregated to inform mass marketing activities or processed at a micro-level to support highly targeted marketing such as online behavioural advertising, personalised purchase incentives and to encourage consumer engagement in brand-based promotional activities.

Digitally mediated communications are enabling a shift from traditional, centrally produced and distributed marketing to more ‘conversational’, collaborative marketing relationships. Conversations comprise a mix of spontaneous commentary and dialogue and commercially initiated brand-based content. The commercial sector is well aware of the significant potential benefits and risks of such conversation. A 2007 global survey by the Nielsen market research company found more than seventy five per cent of respondents rated peer to peer recommendations as the most trustworthy form of advertising (cited in IAB, 2008). Conversely, digitally mediated sharing and dissemination of information and opinion exposes brands and corporations to public scrutiny and comment. Negative reactions can quickly develop into reputational damage which is difficult to reverse and companies seek to minimise risk, but must simultaneously avoid being perceived to be manipulating interactions (Kozinets et al., 2010 and Laczniak, 2006). Unsurprising therefore, that expertise and technology to monitor and evaluate user generated content and secondary social responses independent of confidential commercial strategy has already been developed (see for example http://www.liveworld.com/).

Co-creation

‘Connect, collect, and co-create’ are a bundle of unique IDM functions which can be employed independently of other marketing strategies and activities or integrated to enhance synergies.

Connecting consumer and producer is a prerequisite for marketing relationship. Codes on packaging or in television advertisement entered into a website or as a text to an SMS (short messaging service) for example can be used to initiate a new relationship, reinforce an existing one, or introduce an individual to a virtual community built around a brand or package of consumer interests, such as music and food. IDM and particularly social media have proven to be particularly efficient platforms through which to collect personal data. It has been suggested that the user data associated with the social networking site, MySpace, was the primary reason that the Murdoch News Corporation paid nearly US$600 million to own it (Chester & Montgomery, 2007). Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging sites, even photo and video sharing sites for example are a rich source of data about personal preferences, behaviours and opinions.

Perhaps the most fundamentally game changing aspect of IDM is its capacity to support and promote co-creation: Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2000) were the first to describe the shift from marketing as a centrally controlled management function to one driven by relationships with its customers. They argue that understanding consumption and production as separate economic activities is superseded by a convergence of producer and consumer roles. User generated virally disseminated promotion of price-discounted offers; special interest forums such as Procter and Gamble’s (P&G) social network site, Vocalpoint (previously named Tremor) where consumers are engaged in marketing and brand development are two examples of this shift ( Sheth and Uslay, 2007, Vargo and Lusch, 2008 and Zwass, 2010).

Vargo and Lusch, 2004 and Vargo and Lusch, 2008 propose ‘service dominant logic’ (SDL) as a more informative model of the nature and effect of co-creational marketing, than that provided by traditional ‘goods dominant logic’. Vargo and Lusch describe ten paradigmatic features of the SDL marketing model which they call the ‘foundational premises’. The foundational premises reflect SDL recognition of the consumer as an active agent, playing multiple roles in production as well as consumption of social as well as commercial outputs. Changes in consumer behaviours and values in response to interactive collaborative marketing are therefore important commercial indicators as much as financial measures (Ballantyne and Varey, 2008, Sheth and Uslay, 2007 and Vargo and Lusch, 2004).

Policy interventions to control the promotion of foods and beverages to children and youth

Food is one the most heavily marketed product categories to children and youth. It is estimated that fifty to eighty per cent of food marketing to children expenditure promotes HFSS foods. Marketing increases preference, purchase and consumption of HFSS foods in general as well as brand choices (Cairns et al., 2009 and McGinnis et al., 2006). Frequent consumption of HFSS foods is a recognised risk factor for chronic degenerative diseases including obesity, heart disease, stroke and some cancers (WHO, 2004). The evidence that the marketing of HFSS foods is contributing to the prevalence of overweight, obesity and associated non-communicable disease, such as stroke, heart disease and cancer is therefore convincing, although its contribution relative to other recognised influences is less clear (Harris et al., 2009, WHO, 2004 and WHO, 2010).

In response to this evidence, a plethora of self-regulatory, co-regulatory and statutory controls on food marketing of HFSS foods have been set up all around the world in the last decade (Hawkes & Lobstein, 2011).

Methods

Desk research that drew on a recently completed mapping exercise (Hawkes & Lobstein, 2011) as well as other sources was used to collate policy approaches and interventions aimed at constraining the effects of HFSS food marketing. Vargo and Lusch’s 10 foundational premises were used to provide a comparative paradigmatic framework. The framework provided the basis for a qualitative assessment of the paradigmatic assumptions underpinning prevailing policies and their capacity to control interactive digital marketing and its co-creational effects.

The study also collected publicly available market research data on marketing activities, and promotional strategies, providing a snapshot of current food and beverage IDM and children’s responses. A literature review examined the evaluative evidence on the effectiveness of current policy to constrain the effects of HFSS food and beverage marketing.

Results

Policy paradigms

Self regulatory and co-regulatory codes of good practice, such as the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) in the US, and the European Union Pledge Programme (EU Pledge) were found to be typical of the policy instruments that have been implemented in developed and developing countries. Codes were found to address similar parameters although there was much variation in specific standards such as the age ranges protected and the nutritional criteria applied. Some codes stated they were intended to cover interactive, digital marketing, as well as broadcast and other more traditional marketing methods and channels. None of the voluntary codes or statutory recognised the potential of the consumer as an active agent in the creative marketing process. Policies focused on the content of commercially generated communications and the consumer was cast as a passive recipient of marketing messages.

The role of the consumer-producer relationship in the evolution of food culture was not addressed. Indeed, Fitzpatrick, MacMillan, Hawkes, Anderson, and Dowler (2010) has noted that food culture is currently rarely addressed in food policy. Other research has also found that research-relevant policy does not capture the magnitude of the indirect social and cultural effects of food marketing. For example, the effects on children’s food behaviours of their cumulative exposure to marketing and the effects of marketing promotions on parents and other moderators of children’s food behaviours (Cairns et al., 2009 and Harris et al., 2009).

An overview of findings from the qualitative analysis of food marketing policies paradigmatic assumptions and their capacity to address co-creational marketing is presented in Table 1, Comparison of Service-Dominant Logic and Food Marketing Policy Underlying Paradigms.

Promotion of HFSS foods to children and youth

The promotion of HFSS foods to children is a major economic activity in its own right. A US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) review of expenditure, activities, and self-regulation of food marketing found US$ 1.6 billion out of a total 9.6 billion of food marketing expenditure targeted children and youth. Sixty three per cent of targeted spend was for carbonated non-alcoholic beverages, fast foods and breakfast cereals. The FTC survey found that the proportion of marketing expenditure on digital media was small (five per cent) but also noted that the digital media costs are proportionately lower than for consumable marketing activities because of its (economically defined) non-rival nature (FTC, 2008). A follow up 2010 study by the FTC will in due course provide additional information on trends, which are likely to show further shifts from traditional to digital platforms and channels.

The case study reviewed commercial websites and market research reports and found many examples foods and non-alcoholic beverage IDM to children and youth. IDM and non-digital media marketing targeted activities were increasingly integrated. Commercial practice was found to have embraced all aspects of co-creational marketing rapidly and wholeheartedly.

Evaluation of policy control effectiveness

The impact of policy intended to control child-oriented food marketing in the last decade has been limited. Independent evaluations of food marketing find the nature and content of promotional activity continues to primarily promote HFSS foods and beverages and children’s exposure is still unacceptably high (Boyland et al., 2011, Kunkel and McKinley, 2009, Harris et al., 2009 and Kraak et al., 2011).

Discussion

Digital technologies enable market places to also be social spaces. Children and youth are some of the most active contributors to user generated content (BMRB, 2008 and EC, 2011). They are the ‘digital natives’ of the electronic ecosystems of MP3 players, Web 2.0 mobile devices, broadband, virtual worlds, networks, SMS, and MMS which support communicative relationships and creative interaction.

Digital technologies are changing commercial practices. As an Executive Vice President of McDonald’s at the American Marketing Associations’ MPlanet 2009 conference observed: “we don’t have a magic wand we can wave to make sales happen. The days of command and control are gone. Today, consumers are our partners in how brands are conceived and sold.” User generated content affirms and further develop brands, seeds and nurtures brand-based communities and has become a critical resource in commercial marketing (Precourt, 2009).

Commercial operators have strong incentives to monitor, influence and understand the dynamics and outcomes of the interactions occurring in digitally facilitated social spaces. Marketing strength is rooted in the quantity and quality of consumer and market research data. Contemporary marketing intelligence is now drawing on even greater volumes of detailed data and processing power as a result of interactive digital technologies. The implications of commercial ownership of large volume of personal data, the protection of children’s personal privacy, and their exposure to targeted promotions are matters of public interest in their own right (Youn, 2009). Notwithstanding concerns about the protection of children online, the current availability of large volumes of real-time, real-life data and data processing power also represents a new source of policy-relevant data that could be independently analysed to monitor policy progress and inform future policy development.

The contribution of commercially owned data to evidence-informed future policy development would be a meaningful and socially responsible action (Flyvberg, 2001 and Laczniak, 2006): Walt, Shiffman, Schneider, Murray, and Brugha (2008) has described the temporal limitations of policy analysis, suggesting it can take more than 10 years to understand and evaluate the effects of policy interventions. Practice-based evidence has been recommended to achieve faster public health strategy responses to the obesity crisis in the UK’s Foresight Report on Obesity (Government Office of Science, 2008). The Foresight report almost certainly envisaged intervention practice as the primary source of such evidence. However, consumer and market research data, appropriately anonymised to preserve individual as well as commercial confidentiality could similarly contribute valuable insight on marketing practice and how it indirectly as well as directly influences food behaviours; quantitative measures of its effects; as well as faster evidence-based mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of food and beverage marketing control policies. Making available data for independent monitoring and evaluation of good marketing practice and consumer response is recommended as a critical prerequisite for best practice in self-regulation (EC 2006). Commercial operators have repeatedly expressed commitment to supporting diet-related health policy. The recent uptake of interactive digital technologies for commercial marketing purposes, which is generating both new sources of detailed consumer data and new mechanisms to process this data, provides a timely and unique opportunity for commercial operators to do so.

In contrast to the rapid recognition by the private sector of the commercial consequences and implications of IDM, there is very little independent published research to date on the social impact of IDM. There is however, a substantial body of literature on social networks and how network members interact and engage in shared behaviours, generating new behavioural norms and collective intelligence (Holland, 1995 and Surowiecki, 2004, cited in Zwass, 2010). Furthermore, there is a substantial literature demonstrating that social networks have significant effects on physical and social well being (Centola, 2010, Christakis and Fowler, 2007 and Cohen-Cole and Fletcher, 2008). Research tracking the clustering of health-related traits within social networks for example, has demonstrated social ties are strongly associated with obesity and other health outcomes. The evidence indicates that the capacity of network relationships to spread social norms, behaviours and epidemiological trends is mediated through social interaction and shared community culture, not physical proximity (Centola, 2010 and Christakis and Fowler, 2007). This literature is clearly potentially relevant to IDM in general and social media marketing particularly. A further benefit of the sharing of commercial consumer data collected involving co-creational platforms and supported by digital technologies could be the opportunity for secondary analysis specifically examining culturally and socially mediated impacts of marketing on behaviours.

Conclusions

The study found no evidence to suggest that current prevailing policies have the capacity to constrain the effects of the interactive collaborative marketing of HFSS foods and beverages.

Recommendations for future policy developments are to modify policy to better address the interactive nature of food marketing and to secure agreements on the sharing of commercial data for the purposes of monitoring and evaluation of marketing activity and policy actions to constrain its effects. Independent secondary analysis of this data to further knowledge and understanding on the interaction and influence of marketing on food culture is also recommended.

Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.