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by Colwyn Elder (@colwynelder) If you’ve ever stood in a supermarket checkout queue and experienced a toddler (yours or otherwise) in full-blown meltdown because of being refused tantalising eye-level confectionary within arms’ reach, you probably understand — if not welcome — Woolworths’ recent decision to remove all sweets and chocolates from checkout queues.

Often known as the “guilt aisle” or “walk of temptation”, Woolworths say the move reflects its commitment to providing alternatives for children and adults, and is part of its bigger Good Food Journey, a drive towards providing customers with better food choices. What these choices are remain to be seen, but Woolworths says it will engage customer opinion through panel discussions and focus groups to establish what their preferred alternatives for checkout aisles are.

Emotional Kid by David Castillo Dominici courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image by David Castillo Dominici courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pester power and impulse buying

Pester power and impulse buying are as much a part of retail marketing as Rx.99 price points and buy-one-get-one-free special offers, so putting customer wellbeing ahead of sales will make people happy, right? Yet not everyone seems pleased by these apparent good intentions. Negative customer commentary falls into one of two camps:

  • a growing weariness of political correctness from worthy corporates telling people how to live their lives, and secondly
  • a rather scathing telling off of parents who can’t control or say “no” to their offspring.

Whatever your view, there is no denying that too much sugar negatively impacts our health, contributing to health issues such as obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. This knowledge is well-known and widespread. Equally, we acknowledge the importance of healthy eating, so why does it remain so difficult for us to eat well? It’s all about self-control.

Why people make irrational decisions

The school of behavioural economics looks at why people make irrational decisions. One of these reasons is termed “present bias”, the human tendency to continue with the routines of the present, rather than making changes. Linking closely to this is “temporal discounting”, our irrational tendency to weight present rewards (that delicious chocolate bar) more heavily than future ones (long-term health). This is why our good intentions — to quit smoking, join a gym, or eat more healthily — remain just that, and the best time to start is always tomorrow… only tomorrow never comes.

Adding insult to the injury of our lack of self-control, we also tend to pay little attention to the small cumulative consequences of our repeated actions, such as the effect of sugary beverages on our weight, or the cumulative health effect of smoking. A little bit of what you fancy can’t hurt, no? Even when the pack tells us that “smoking kills”? Yes, although numbers are in decline, people continue to smoke in spite of increasingly graphic pack warnings, increasing taxes on cigarettes, and even increasing limitations on where you can smoke.

Libertarian paternalism is the idea that it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to steer people’s choices and behavior while respecting their freedom of choice. Provided, of course, it’s in the public interest, and the government ban on smoking in public areas is probably the best example of this. Tobacco is addictive, but leading public health figures will tell you sugar is as well, and there is a similar call for products with high-sugar content to carry both taxation and health warnings, not dissimilar to cigarettes.

Product placement

Product placement is a powerful retail-marketing technique, and moving sweets from checkouts will hopefully go some way toward saving us from our own lack of self-control. We say “no” to our children because we want to do what’s best for them, yet all too often we can’t say no to ourselves.

 

Colwyn ElderStrategic consultant Colwyn Elder (@colwynelder) brings a global perspective to the issue of sustainability, having lived and worked in London, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Cape Town. She contributes the monthly “Green Sky Thinking” column on sustainability issues to MarkLives.

 

 

 

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