Executive Summary
Despite the increase in the number of healthful options available to consumers, the proportion of overweight people has increased, a finding often referred to as the American obesity paradox. This research identifies people’s tendency to underestimate the calorie content of combinations of healthful (virtues) and unhealthful (vices) meals as one potential cause for the growing obesity trend.
Consider a calorie-conscious person who is choosing between two meals: a lone hamburger or the same hamburger with a side salad. After some deliberation, this person chooses the second meal, even though, objectively, the two-item meal contains more calories and, therefore, is inconsistent with his or her goal of consuming fewer calories. The preference for combinations of healthful and indulgent items is not unusual and has been fodder for stand-up comedy acts that poke fun at consumers who believe that by purchasing Diet Coke with their double cheeseburger and chili fries, they are making a virtuous choice.
The foregoing example raises the question of how consumers evaluate the calorie content of individual items and how they integrate these estimates into an overall estimate of the calories contained in a particular meal. Conventional wisdom suggests that deriving calorie estimates of combinations of food items should be fairly trivial: The calorie content of a meal comprising several individual items should equal the sum of the individual estimates of these items.
However, the authors argue that when evaluating combinations of healthful and indulgent items, consumers tend to underestimate their calorie content, such that the combined meal can be perceived not only as having fewer calories than the sum of its individual components but also as having fewer calories than the indulgent item alone. In the context of the example, this leads to the paradoxical finding that the combination of a cheeseburger and a salad is perceived as having fewer calories than the cheeseburger alone.
The finding that consumers tend to underestimate the calorie content of combinations of healthful and indulgent menu choices casts a shadow on recent attempts by many fast-food restaurants to add healthful options to their menus. While providing an alternative to people who are interested in a more healthful lifestyle, the introduction of more healthful options ironically can lead to overconsumption stemming from underestimating the calorie content of the considered meals. In turn, this can lead to counterproductive behaviors in which people, thinking that they are eating a more healthful and less caloric meal, actually consume more calories.
Biography
Alexander Chernev is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He holds a PhD in Psychology from Sofia University and a PhD in Business Administration from Duke University. Professor Chernev’s research applies theories and concepts related to consumer behavior and managerial decision making to develop successful marketing strategies. His research has been published in leading marketing journals, such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Professor Chernev serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and International Journal of Research in Marketing, and has advised numerous companies on issues of strategic marketing planning and analysis, new product development, and customer management policies.
David Gal is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He holds a PhD in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, an MS in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University, and a BS in computer science from Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Gal’s research expertise is in the area of consumer decision making, with a particular focus on motivational influences on decision making. Other areas of research include perceptual processes and survey design. He teaches an MBA course on marketing new products and services.
Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 4, August 2010
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