Abstract

One of the factors influencing diet choices is the way information is presented and actionable. Consumer's food choice decisions may be hampered by their inability to combine diet information and relate it to their goals or recommended public guidelines. Providing nutrition or dietary information in a convenient, salient and useful way at the point of choice may lead to better choices. The growth of mobile technologies and online shopping enables this possibility, however, little is known about their effectiveness in improving choices. To assess this opportunity we designed an online shopping experiment and administered it to a large sample of British consumers. The experiment considered if a calorie counter for products added to a meal plan would change the total amount of calories participants selected. Our results show that such tool would reduce the total amount of calories selected. This effect is significant when participants reported diet-related health issues and is reduced when consumers do larger shops or are under time pressure.
 

Curriculum vitae

I am a food economist and Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness Management at the School of Agricultural Food and Rural Development at Newcastle University, where I currently lead the Food Business Management & Marketing undergraduate program. My main interest and expertise is in food economics and marketing, particularly on the economics of information in food chains. I teach food policy, food business economics and food marketing. My research focused on understanding how business can create value through quality attributes and how consumers and other agents in food chain use information to make decisions. I researched how business managers and consumers use of information to support their decisions. I am particularly interested in understanding how to mitigate information asymmetries such that markets operate more efficiently. Recently, I have investigated consumer demand and industry supply of healthy foods. I am also working on the economics of food fraud and third party certification. Other research themes I worked on are the economics of traceability, food standards and the economics of animal disease surveillance schemes. My work has appeared in leading Agricultural and food economics, marketing and food policy peer review journals. I currently serve as the chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Agricultural and Applied Economists Association and in the editorial board of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review British Food Journal, Economia Agro-Alimentare and the Journal of Food Products Marketing.