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Special Feature: Is Impulse Marketing a Public Health Risk?

October 24, 2012

Special Feature: Is Impulse Marketing a Public Health Risk?

Source: RAND Corporation

While the prominence of unhealthy food in U.S. retail locations is perhaps never more pronounced than it is now, in the days leading up to Halloween, store placement of candy and other junk food has a significant effect on consumer behavior year-round.

A clear example of this influence is the placement of candy at the cash register, widely acknowledged to be a promotional strategy called “impulse marketing,” which encourages spur-of-the-moment, emotional purchases.

In a recent editorial, RAND Health’s Deborah Cohen, who studies how environmental and contextual factors influence health, argues that we should consider treating prominent store placement of unhealthy items as a hidden risk factor. Impulse marketing influences our food choices in a way that is largely automatic and out of our conscious control, which affects our risk of diet-related chronic diseases.

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Categories: food and agriculture, health and health care, obesity, psychology and sociology, RAND Corporation, retail
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