The Power of Context: How Marketers Can Upend Harmful Implicit Intuitions in Consumers’ Minds Leading to Healthier Shopping Patterns
(A2019-8702)

AUTHORS

Olivier Trendel, Grenoble Ecole de Management; Robert Mai, Grenoble Ecole de Management; Carolina Werle, Grenoble Ecole de Management; Amanda Pruski Yamim, Grenoble Ecole de Management

KEYWORDS

context; implicit intuition; food products

ABSTRACT

Implicit, automatic intuitions drive harmful behaviors. To mitigate their detrimental impact, this research posits that the context is key, because it can automatically activate alternative intuitions that coexist in consumers’ minds. Study 1 investigates this coexistence of opposite automatic intuitions about food products, related to the unhealthy = tasty automatic intuition. Although consumers activate the unhealthy = tasty intuition by default, the opposing healthy = tasty intuition also is deeply rooted in consumers’ minds. A shopping experiment in retail lab test stores in shopping centers (Study 2) provides evidence that consumers can effectively be nudged to spontaneously use the contextualized intuition to make healthier food shopping decisions when their attention is directed toward health using front-of-pack nutrition labeling.