Sainsbury’s has decided that changing consumer behaviour must come before attitudinal correction in the fight to make shoppers buy more healthy products.
The supermarket chain already over-indexes by 10 per cent on healthy customers, says director, Sainsbury’s brands Judith Batchelar. “Health is one of our key strengths,” she claimed, “and as a retailer brand we can influence many aspects of health in our stores.
“But it is no longer sufficient to think that merely by offering healthy products for sale in our stores that we will drive changes in consumer behaviour. Our new thinking is that we must drive the behaviour first and the attitude will follow. Try Something New is a great example of that - it’s a call to action, saying: ‘it’ll be alright, don’t worry, you might just like it and if you do you’ll try it again’.
“The key to driving behaviour is to join up all aspects of the customer offer to help the consumer navigate their way to eating more healthily.”
Batchelar said Sainsbury’s use the term ‘stealth health’ to describe its approach. “It’s not just about healthy eating ranges, but all of our products. All of our products have the potential to be healthier and in the last two years, more than 7,000 have been reformulated with that in mind,” she explained.
For the consumer, health should not be about denial and deprivation, she said. “We want to have a lighter touch than in the past, and we want health to be there as a given, rather than being the reason for buying the product. We have also focused on driving the behaviour of our colleagues, of suppliers, manufacturers and technologists.
“Our healthy goal is not just another marketing campaign and it is not just about encouraging a few people to change a lot. It is about everyone changing a little,” Batchelar concluded.
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