Influences on children’s snack purchasing decisions

What determines how children decide to spend their cash on snacks? A study published in Appetite suggests that children’s experience with money and their liking of brands influenced purchase decisions—and that for some children, higher prices for unhealthy snacks might motivate healthier choices.

The research took place in after-school programs in the Boston area with a sample of 116 children aged 8–11 years. The study consisted of a survey, two cognitive tests, and a discrete choice experiment (DCE). The participants were paid $2.00 each as compensation after completing the cognitive tests and could then spend that in the DCE part of the study.

The researchers presented a series of snack options to the children—cookies, apple slices, and tubes of yogurt. Each child was presented 10 times with pairs of photographs of two snack items that differed by product type, price, and brand. Each time they could select one of the two products or decide to make no choice.

The child was told that at the end of the experiment, one choice would be drawn at random from the 10 decisions the child made and the child would be obligated to purchase the chosen snack. The child had to pay the stated price of that choice, which ranged between $0.30 and $0.70, from the money previously earned in the study and they received the designated snack. This feature of the design made each choice more realistic for the kids. One group of snacks was from McDonald’s in order to test the importance of branding on children’s choices.

The researchers found that the children made choices based primarily on food types, and most often chose the chocolate chip cookies, with apple slices in second place. The researchers also discovered that brand awareness was not necessarily aligned with preference of snack foods. Importantly, the extent of children’s experience with money influenced their purchase decisions, suggesting that higher prices for unhealthy snacks might be helpful in motivating at least those children that have experience with money to choose healthier options.

The authors point out that this is a small study, regionally biased, and with limited choices within the experiment. They suggest further research to explore the efficacy of using price and presentation (e.g., packaging, branding) as additional tools in the fight against the growing incidence of chronic disease among children.

Abstract