With a little help from my retailer: Shopper acceptance of nutritional decision aids supporting healthy grocery shopping

Front-of-package (FOP) nutrition labels are increasingly implemented as an intervention for promoting healthier purchases. However, the impact of FOP labels on actual purchase decisions appears to remain rather limited. As healthy grocery shopping is an effortful and difficult task, shoppers may benefit from additional support. Therefore, this study examines shopper acceptance of seven nutritional decision aids (NDAs), tools that support shoppers with the identification and purchases of healthier food alternatives. We designed seven NDAs based on established (online) decision aids such as filtering and sorting and incorporated nutritional information (i.e., Nutri-Score) to support healthy purchase decisions. We argue that coercive pressures embedded in the design of NDAs increase shoppers’ perceived intrusiveness, which in turn decreases NDA acceptance. Results from Study 1 show that the NDAs systematically vary in their degree of coercive pressure exerted on shoppers to make healthier purchase decisions (NDA coerciveness). Study 2, a large study among heads of household (n = 1031), demonstrates that when NDAs exert a high degree of pressure to make a healthy purchase decision, NDA acceptance decreases. Additionally, study results show that NDA coerciveness increases perceived intrusiveness, which in turn decreases acceptance, explaining part of the underlying mechanism. Lastly, we find that the effect of NDA coerciveness on perceived intrusiveness is less (more) pronounced for shoppers with high (low) healthy eating interests. Overall, the results of this research yield novel insights for the development of effective health interventions in grocery stores that benefit shoppers as well as retailers.