Health messaging on meal deal crisps

What happened in this trial?

The intervention consisted of introducing a new merchandising display for crisps within a designated bay in the ‘meal deal’ section in stores. The merchandising display consisted of separate buckets for each crisp product, with all standard crisps placed in red buckets, and five ‘healthier’ crisp varieties placed in designated buckets in different colours. The ‘healthier’ crisps were positioned at eye-level, accompanied by nutrition claims stating: “lower in fat”, “higher in fibre” or “under 100 calories”. The intervention combined two behavioural levers: health messaging and prominent eye-level product placement.

What did we find?

We evaluated the effectiveness of the intervention using 23 months of daily sales data from 139 intervention stores with the new merchandising displays installed and 17 control stores of similar size without the new displays.

Overall, there was no statistically significant change in sales of healthy crisps due to the intervention alone. However, the “under 100 calories” showed a difference in sales between the intervention and control stores, suggesting this type of health messaging may be more effective than others.

At the overall basket level, meal deals that included healthier crisps had more favourable nutritional profile.

• Average total fat in meal deals with healthier crisps was 8.1g per 100g
• Average total fat in meal deals with standard crisps was 12.2g per 100g

This means meal deals with standard crisps contained around 50% more fat. These findings highlight the importance of reformulating to provide healthier product options.