Marketing Nutrition: Soy, Functional Foods, Biotechnology, and Obesity

6. Targeting Nutritional Gatekeepers

six Targeting฀Nutritional฀Gatekeepers The biggest single driver of consumption is the availability of a particular food. In most households, what is eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks is determined by what the primary grocery shopper—the food gatekeeper—has purchased. If a teenager wants to eat Pop-Tarts but they are not in the house, he or she will probably not eat Pop-Tarts. The teenager would have to make a separate trip to the grocery store, borrow some from a neighbor, or persuade the gatekeeper to buy them on the next shopping trip. If only rice cakes are available, the teenager must decide whether to eat them, but this is a constrained decision. The primary grocery shopper determines what can be consumed in the house when he or she buys groceries. Most of us believe that we determine our food choices, but the set of options we have is determined by whoever does the shopping. Even when we consider what people eat when away from home (be they sack lunches or school lunches), our surveys indicate that about 72 percent of the food decisions by family members are made directly or indirectly by the primary grocery shopper and food preparer. It has been found that the actions and enthusiasm of the gatekeepers can help develop beliefs and preferences about food. For the purposes of marketing nutrition, this is good news because it means that we do not have to convince every man, woman, teenager, and child to eat more nutritiously. All we need to do is to convince the food 06.73-82_Wans.indd฀฀฀73 3/30/05฀฀฀2:52:29฀PM 74 • tools for targeting gatekeeper for the family. Typically (approximately 87 percent of the time) this gatekeeper is also the person who has the prime responsibility for food preparation. Research since the 1940s has shown that family members are likely to eat what the gatekeeper buys and prepares. Trying to convince the entire country to eat more fruits and vegetables, for instance, would not be as productive as simply convincing the primary shopper of the household to buy more fruits and vegetables and fewer processed foods. We also know from the previous chapters that one of the common elements among taste-motivated people was that they claimed to live with a great cook. There are benefits of focusing only on the primary meal planners because they are more serious about this role. The influence of these good cooks is much higher than that of convenience cooks or carryout cooks. Past work shows that these good cooks were more effective in encouraging their families to consume organ meats during the rationing years of World War II (chapter 2). Even today, recent studies show that people who like the taste of soy often indicate that they live with a good cook (see chapter 4). Given the influence good cooks can have on long-term eating habits , nutrition marketers must develop effective methods that categorize the cooks that are most predisposed to nutrition-related behavior. This chapterexaminestwoquestions:Whichdomain—cookingbehavior,food usage, or personality—best differentiates between various subsegments of good cooks? What types of cooks can most easily be persuaded to adopt healthier foods and healthier lifestyles? After providing a background on common and distinct characteristics of good cooks, this chapter looks at ways to categorize these characteristics and determine which are most related to adopting healthier foods. If the goal is to encourage consumers to eat more of a functional food, these categorizations can help reveal which types of cooks would be the most promising to target. Identifying these traits and marketing specifically toward these segments is the most efficient means of communicating a nutrition-related message. Good cooks who serve as gatekeepers are defined as primary meal planners who prepare favorable food for their families. Such cooks often describe themselves as being better than average cooks and are referred to by others as better than average. Yet not all cooks are the same. There are very different types of good cooks, and there are a number of dimensions on which they can be defined. Studies that follow the development of master chefs—people who are 06.73-82_Wans.indd฀฀฀74 3/30/05฀฀฀2:52:29฀PM Targeting฀Nutritional฀Gatekeepers • 75 good cooks—most commonly note several characteristic domains. We will look at three domains in which...