One
of the fiercest marketing battles in the world takes place in kitchens
and at dining room tables across the world. The sellers are parents,
trying everything to persuade their children to eat their vegetables.
Now,
new research shows why parents — and food marketers — might be doing
themselves no favors. The problem is the pitch: It is too aggressive,
even at its most well-meaning and heartfelt. The best way to pitch food
to children, the research finds, is to present it with no marketing
message whatsoever.
Don’t
tell them it’s healthy or it will make them smart or strong. Telling
them it’s yummy is O.K., but even that message doesn’t seem to help the
cause. “You just need to give them the food. You mess them up by giving
all kinds of messages,” said the paper’s co-author, Ayelet Fishbach, a
professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of
Chicago Booth School of Business. When giving food to children, “nothing
helps beyond no message whatsoever.”
The
findings, to be published in October in Journal of Consumer Research,
offer insight not only into children’s decision-making around food, but
also, more broadly, into the powerful and counterintuitive ways that
overzealous marketing can misfire — with adults and children alike.
The
idea for the study came from Michal Maimaran, a visiting assistant
marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
and co-author of the paper. She wondered why her tactics could backfire
when she tried to sell healthy food to her children, ages 7, 4 and 2.
To
be scientific about it, the two scholars devised a series of
experiments that they ran with the cooperation of a Y.M.C.A. outside
Chicago. In the first experiment, children ages 4 and 5 were read a
story about a little girl named Tara who ate some Wheat Thins before she
went out to play.
But
not all the children heard the same story. In one version, Tara ate the
Wheat Thins and “felt strong and healthy.” The children who heard this
version were reminded that the crackers are good for their health.
Another group of children heard that “Tara thought the crackers were
yummy, and she was happy.” A third group heard that Tara ate Wheat Thins
but without any description of whether the crackers were healthy or
yummy.
Then
each child got a moment alone to snack from a bowl of Wheat Thins. The
number of crackers the children ate varied sharply depending on which
version of the story they heard.
If
children heard that Wheat Thins were healthy, they ate, on average,
three crackers. If they heard that the crackers were yummy, they ate
7.2.
But
most noteworthy, the researchers said, was the choice made by children
who got no information at all about the character of Wheat Thins: They
ate nine. In subsequent studies, the researchers discovered the same
phenomenon in younger children, and with carrots.
Why
was no message the best message? One possible explanation has to do
with the “dilution effect” — the watering down of a marketing message
that makes too many claims.
For
instance, a video game system that is marketed as a movie player/video
game console/Internet device might fare less well among consumers than
if it is pitched as an “entertainment system.” Too many claims devalue
each one.
Similarly, the researchers hypothesize, if children think food is good for them, it can’t also taste good.
So
what to do? Let children make their own decision with a major caveat:
Choose what food to put in front of them. Don’t pitch, but also: “Don’t
let them do the shopping,” Professor Fishbach said.
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