Signposting to Healthier products

What happened in this trial?

In this trial, healthier swaps were identified for eight Lidl products, from a number of different categories, including cereals, tuna, chicken, fries, granola, rice, cheese and coleslaw. A product qualified as ‘healthier’ if it contained fewer calories, less fat, saturated fat, or sugar, or if it provided more fibre than the original product.

The healthier swaps were the same price or cheaper and on similar types of products, so customers could use them in existing meal plans with minimal changes.

The trial ran for four weeks in February 2021 and was introduced across all Lidl stores. To assess the impact, we analysed sales data from 133 stores in two regions of England. The analysis compared 12 weeks before the intervention, the four-week trial period and 12 weeks after the intervention.

We defined trial success as seeing an increase in sales of the healthier swap and no change or a decrease in the original product.

What did we find?

The results varied across product categories. Sales of some healthier swaps for cereals and coleslaw increased significantly during the trial. Low-sugar cereal sales increased by 32% compared to predicted sales, and low-fat coleslaw sales increased by 71% compared to predicted sales.

For fries, rice and cheese, sales increased for both the healthier swap and the original products.

For chicken, tuna and granola, the signposting did not lead to any meaningful change in sales of the healthier swaps.

Future research should explore propensity to change by product category and messaging type to understand why differences across product category were observed.