Nudges in the Supermarket: Experience from Point of Sale Signs

A project was designed with a supermarket with an objective to encourage the development of a community environment supportive of lifestyles that could reduce residents risk for obesity and cancer in a small community to provide point of sale signs or nudges. These signs encouraged consumers to purchase healthier foods in main supermarket categories accompanied, in the intervention community and store, by overall healthy choice signs and messages to increase the sale of produce and other healthier food items. The community education reinforcement program included newspaper articles, public service announcements on television and in-person healthy eating classes. Relative to the control store, the program had a statistically significant impact on increasing purchases within the grain pasta and sauce category among the nudged item’s categories; and a significant increase in the purchase of green leafy produce category. An overall increase in the purchase of several nudged item’s categories and produce categories shows promise in supermarket based community interventions for behavior change. However, the lack of significant increase in purchases across all categories shows the challenges of changing food purchase behavior.