Lecture week 1: History, evolution and objectives of food marketing
Everything mentioned in the course is part of the exam: lectures & guest lectures, literature, etc.
Food marketing =
- Pomeranz & Adler, 2015: “Marketing is a broad concept that includes (1) speech-based communications, and (2) non-speech
related activities. In the first category, marketers communicate through an arrar of speech-based pratices that included both
traditional “advertising” (e.g., billboards and television, radio, and print ads) and broader promotional strategies (e.g., public
relations communications and YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter content). Food marketers and retailers also engage in marketing
practices that do not involve speech, such as establishing the price of products and determining where to locate them within a
store.”
- all communication around a food brand
- the act of communicating to the consumer through a range of marketing techniques in order to add value to a food product and
persuade the consumer to purchase. This includes all activities that occur in between the completion of a product through to
the purchasing process of consumers.
The 4 P’s
1. Product = the goods and/or services that the company will offer to the consumer. A company can achieve this by either creating
a new food product, or by modifying or improving an existing food product.
Unicef for example supports that children should be more protected by different regulations for food marketing/advertising.
2. Price = an important aspect in order to influence the buying activity, when people are in the stores, or to persuade people to go
to the stores and buy also other products that are not related to the advertised foods.
There is a big debate if healthier food should be subsidized and make unhealthier food more expensive. The is happening for
example in the UK and Mexico. They also have to put a label with the amount of sugar on the product. Therefore, the company
puts less sugar in the drink to make sure they can sell it for less.
3. Promotion = how we actually define food marketing. It are the actions used to communicate a food product’s features and
benefits; therefore, persuading the consumer to purchase the product. There are multiple avenues used to promote a food
product to consumers. Food advertisements on television are used to attract the consumer, persuading them to go to the store
and purchase that food product. Additionally, promotions in magazines and newspapers may offer coupons for food products.
We have the more traditional kind of food marketing (radio, magazine, television, etc.) but now we also have new forms of food marketing
(youtube, social media, etc.) which is considered more influencial and persuasive as traditional kinds of food marketing.
The video shows that marketing is manipulating us. The main aim is for consumers to buy the product. Based on information we have an
appetite, craving for the food, while it is not the same in real life. Therefore, it is so important to make a good and healthy decision by
counteracting the effects of these marketing tools. There are many forms to misform a food product.
4. Place = the distribution and warehousing efforst necessary to move a food from the manufacturer to a location where a
consumer can buy it. It can also refer to where the product is located in a retail outlet (e.g. the end of an aisle; the top, bottom,
or middle shelf; in a special display case, etc.).
There are many different place possibilities to influence your choice of food.
Particularly the promotion is very important for us!
In the evolution of food marketing, we can distinguish three (of four?) phases of food marketing distinguished:
1. Fragmentation phase: … - end of the 19th century
In the fragmentation phase, countries were divided into numerous geographic fragments for food sales because transporting food was
expensive, leaving most production, distribution, and selling locally based.
2. Unification phase: end of the 19th century – mid 20st century
Distribution was made possible by railroads, coordination, coordination of sales forces was made possible by the telegraph and telephone,
and product consistency was made possible by advances in manufacturing. This new distribution system was led by larde food processors
and by companies such as Heinz, Quaker Otas, Campbell Soup, and Coca Cola which sold their brands (inter)nationally. Advertising in print
media and direct marketing through demonstrations at stores and public venues were among the prime marketing tools.
For the first time, it was possible to do (inter)national food marketing and transportation.
These big companies started to compete with each other. In the end, food marketing is heavily affected by competition. Especially this
fierce competition led to marketing in multiple formats to attract the attention of (potential) consumers.
3. Segmentation phase: (1950 – present)
Television and internet advertising made it possible for a wider range of competing products to focus on different benefits and images and
thus appeal to different demographics and psychographic markets. More efficient distributions (e.g. flights, boats, trains, trucks) led to the
possibility to ‘sell’ your brand and product worldwide.
It was possible to create a larger surplus (cost of what it takes to develop a product versus cost what people have to pay in the store) value
for your products. The surplus is strongly affected by the competition.
The plane made it way easier to transport food all over the world and therefore the surplus became larger.
4. Personalized/tailored phase (2010 – current) (is happening together with the segmentation phase)
Personalized/tailored marketing possibilities have increased immensively due to big data collections and lots of modern technologies like
artificial intelligence, machine learning, neuromarketing and eye-tracking (can tell you what people watch, how long they watch it, etc. →
this can tell you which kind of food marketing is the most effective).
,Neuromarketing = it can tell you which brain areas are highlighted when a person is exposed to food marketing. This is interesting,
because you want to know what people think/feel/what their brains do when they watch a food advertisement. This can increase people’s
amount of consumptions of food.
The overall objective of food marketing = to increase the sales! This can also be an indirect effect (e.g. you want people to get to know your
brand and thereby increase your sales).
Capitalism is influencing the level of the effectiveness of food marketing. In the beginning is about a local market, but now with capitalism
it is different: different shareholders, etc.
This influences the whole game of food marketing.
The overly abundant food supply, combined with a society so affluent that most people can afford to buy more food than they
need, sets the stage for competition. The food industry must compete fiercely for every dollar spent on food, and food
companies expend extraordinary resources to develop market products that will sell, regardless of their effect on nutritional
status or waistlines.
→ the main aim of food marketing is to sell products within a brand. Because the competition is so much globalized and fierce,
they use all kinds of different instruments to be able to sell these food products, without taking into account that it can have
negative consequences within the ‘game they are playing’.
To satisfy stakeholders, food companies must convince people to eat more of their products or to eat their products instead of
those of competitors. They do so through advertising and public relations, of course, but also by working tirelessly to convince
government officials, nutrition professionals, and the media that their products promote health-or at least to not harm them.
Much of this work is a virtually invisible part of contemporary culture that attracts occasional notice.
→ it is very difficult for scientists or somebody that is interested in the health of people to convince a brand to not advertise
something, because there is this freedom of speech/advertisement. So it is very difficult to show people in this area that ‘this is
not the way to move forward’.
→ especially the goal to let people eat more is dangerous: it leads to diseases like obesity
Nowadays, there are ten large food companies who have an amazingly large share of the food products there are sold. However, many of
their food products are simply unhealthy. These companies are continuously seeking for other businesses to buy (for example companies
that is selling a kind of healthy food which is a competition for your product they sell this business and stop promoting this healthy food or
find a different way of bringing it in the market).
For example the tobacco industry influences the tobacco plants and are manipulating them so they include nicotine that is even more
addictive.
It is also showed that the food industry is the same: increasing the reinforcing value of a food product by manipulating it.
→ they don’t tell you that some food products are bad for your health. There is an example that they are making a sandwich
with Nutella. If you do this and you do it the same way as the package, you need 3 theaspoons (which is 12 sugar blocks!!) on
your sandwich. So if you believe the commercial and packaging of Nutella, this is crazy. This is with so many food products which
people buy all the time. So a lot of advertising of products is super misleading!
A lot of blue zones are islands, therefore people can live very healthy there (lots of nature etc.). However, people in ‘blue zones’ (healthy,
happy people) do eat healthy, do not drink a lot of alcohol etc. → so this makes a real important difference!!
Also, within the top 10 most obese nations, the first place is American Samoa, while it is an extremely beautiful island. This was because of
an Americanisation of the food industry there: a high level of fast-food restaurants, lots of unhealthy food marketing, possibility to eat
healthy was reduced, they received cars so they moved less.
In total, 51% of all food marketing is focused on sugary drinks, sugary cereals, sweets & snacks. Only less than 1% is focused on fruits and
vegetables!
Food marketing is not only to persuade people to do something, but also to inform them! However, lots of information is not true (for
example on fish you need to mention where the fish is packaged to know if it is still fresh. However, lots of packages put information on
the package about the fish which is not t
Food products look different and contain different stuff in different regions of the world. However, it is obligated to inform consumers
about this difference. Only when this is mentioned, there is honest food marketing. However, people can feel discriminated because they
feel that a food product is different than somewhere else in the world.
Lecture week 2: Mix of Food Marketing
Food marketing is everywhere, that is important to understand. It is very difficult to think outside of the box and to think that you have to
eat something else than you are seeing on television.
Formula1/Max Verstappen is a very implicit form of food marketing. Max is driving for the RedBull team.
Red Bull is advertising a lot of sports like Formula 1, which are all very cool to do. So this is what they want to show (that they are cool).
There are different documentaires that show that marketing is so focused on promoting you to eat unhealthy food.
Although there are also campaigns nowadays that encourage you to eat healthier (less meat, less sugar, more fruit and vegetables, etc.), it
is still really hard to encourage people to do this and is done less often than the promotion of unhealthy food.
, Sugar addiction
Most people (and animals), when they are born they already like sugar and want
to eat something with sugar. So you like sugary foods more than food without
sugar.
If you eat sugar, you release foods of neurological reward (like dopamine) and
thus it makes you happy. So what you will see is that your blood sugar will rise,
but after that moment your blood sugar levels fall rapidly and you become very
tired (‘after lunch dip’).
The problem with eating so much sugar in a short time period: you sort this
energy as fat and it remains there as fat. And, when the blood sugar levels fall,
you start craving for more sugar. Therefore, it is very difficult to stop eating
candy after two candies (because both your body and mind want it, your body
asks for it and your mind want it to become happy).
Food advertising tries to start this cycle and thus wants you to eat sugar.
Because of the marketing, you have craving for sugary food all the time and it
makes it super hard for you to not eat it and to buy and eat healthy food.
In some villages in the USA you cannot even buy healthy food, there is only
unhealthy food available.
Scientific research shows that there is a direct link of food advertisements on:
• Brand/product attitudes
→ because Max won the Formula1, people implicitly think that RedBull actually makes you faster and makes you win
• Cognitions
→ You remember RedBull better, it comes to your mind often and quickly
• Emotions
→ RedBull makes us happy because Max Verstappen won and we are happy because of that
• Eating/consumption behavior
→ This is a very important insight. That we (only) like RedBull more is not a problem, but if we consume it more, it becomes a real problem.
If you watch at how the videoclips are influencing us and you will drink the small bottle of Cola, you already drunk 22% of the sugar you
need on a whole day!
If you eat dorritos (a small package!) you already consumed 12% of the fat you use on a whole day. And that are only small packages, so if
you drink a normal bottle of Cola and you eat more chips, you already consumed a lot(!) of sugar and fat.
Main question: is there a causal relationship between food advertisements and food intake?
→ Frans is doing research about this to show to the Dutch government that this is a real problem.
Some colleagues of Frans show that in general, there is an association (so not a causal relationship!) between television viewing and
obesity even when you take into account potential confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, familial tendency to overweight,
and levels of physical activity.
There is the distinction between different sorts of food marketing:
1. “Old media/advertisements”
- Television
- Newspaper
- Radio
- Magazines
- Billboards
There are big differences in how many food marketing is present in a country. There is a significant difference in these different worlds. In
the USA there are food marketing and fastfood restaurants everywhere and for example way more than in Cuba. Also, people in the US
weigh a lot more overall than in Cuba (of course Cuba also has other problems).
2. “New Media/advertisements”
- Banners on websites
- Social media
- Product placements in movies, shows, series (products used in the serie)
- Promotional characters (frozen or Disney figures on cereals for example to make it more appealing and making it more
appealing and creating the added value to the food product to make sure people desire it and want to buy it)
- Celebrity endorsement
- Giveaways
But also:
- Sport stars candys/brands
Rogier Federor has his own Swiss chocolate brand and is advertising for it. Or a tennis player who released her own candy brand. And in
forms of car racing they are using M&M’s on the cars/clothing etc.
- Viral marketing
- Programma and event sponsorship (“The McDonalds Tennis Tournament”)
Everything mentioned in the course is part of the exam: lectures & guest lectures, literature, etc.
Food marketing =
- Pomeranz & Adler, 2015: “Marketing is a broad concept that includes (1) speech-based communications, and (2) non-speech
related activities. In the first category, marketers communicate through an arrar of speech-based pratices that included both
traditional “advertising” (e.g., billboards and television, radio, and print ads) and broader promotional strategies (e.g., public
relations communications and YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter content). Food marketers and retailers also engage in marketing
practices that do not involve speech, such as establishing the price of products and determining where to locate them within a
store.”
- all communication around a food brand
- the act of communicating to the consumer through a range of marketing techniques in order to add value to a food product and
persuade the consumer to purchase. This includes all activities that occur in between the completion of a product through to
the purchasing process of consumers.
The 4 P’s
1. Product = the goods and/or services that the company will offer to the consumer. A company can achieve this by either creating
a new food product, or by modifying or improving an existing food product.
Unicef for example supports that children should be more protected by different regulations for food marketing/advertising.
2. Price = an important aspect in order to influence the buying activity, when people are in the stores, or to persuade people to go
to the stores and buy also other products that are not related to the advertised foods.
There is a big debate if healthier food should be subsidized and make unhealthier food more expensive. The is happening for
example in the UK and Mexico. They also have to put a label with the amount of sugar on the product. Therefore, the company
puts less sugar in the drink to make sure they can sell it for less.
3. Promotion = how we actually define food marketing. It are the actions used to communicate a food product’s features and
benefits; therefore, persuading the consumer to purchase the product. There are multiple avenues used to promote a food
product to consumers. Food advertisements on television are used to attract the consumer, persuading them to go to the store
and purchase that food product. Additionally, promotions in magazines and newspapers may offer coupons for food products.
We have the more traditional kind of food marketing (radio, magazine, television, etc.) but now we also have new forms of food marketing
(youtube, social media, etc.) which is considered more influencial and persuasive as traditional kinds of food marketing.
The video shows that marketing is manipulating us. The main aim is for consumers to buy the product. Based on information we have an
appetite, craving for the food, while it is not the same in real life. Therefore, it is so important to make a good and healthy decision by
counteracting the effects of these marketing tools. There are many forms to misform a food product.
4. Place = the distribution and warehousing efforst necessary to move a food from the manufacturer to a location where a
consumer can buy it. It can also refer to where the product is located in a retail outlet (e.g. the end of an aisle; the top, bottom,
or middle shelf; in a special display case, etc.).
There are many different place possibilities to influence your choice of food.
Particularly the promotion is very important for us!
In the evolution of food marketing, we can distinguish three (of four?) phases of food marketing distinguished:
1. Fragmentation phase: … - end of the 19th century
In the fragmentation phase, countries were divided into numerous geographic fragments for food sales because transporting food was
expensive, leaving most production, distribution, and selling locally based.
2. Unification phase: end of the 19th century – mid 20st century
Distribution was made possible by railroads, coordination, coordination of sales forces was made possible by the telegraph and telephone,
and product consistency was made possible by advances in manufacturing. This new distribution system was led by larde food processors
and by companies such as Heinz, Quaker Otas, Campbell Soup, and Coca Cola which sold their brands (inter)nationally. Advertising in print
media and direct marketing through demonstrations at stores and public venues were among the prime marketing tools.
For the first time, it was possible to do (inter)national food marketing and transportation.
These big companies started to compete with each other. In the end, food marketing is heavily affected by competition. Especially this
fierce competition led to marketing in multiple formats to attract the attention of (potential) consumers.
3. Segmentation phase: (1950 – present)
Television and internet advertising made it possible for a wider range of competing products to focus on different benefits and images and
thus appeal to different demographics and psychographic markets. More efficient distributions (e.g. flights, boats, trains, trucks) led to the
possibility to ‘sell’ your brand and product worldwide.
It was possible to create a larger surplus (cost of what it takes to develop a product versus cost what people have to pay in the store) value
for your products. The surplus is strongly affected by the competition.
The plane made it way easier to transport food all over the world and therefore the surplus became larger.
4. Personalized/tailored phase (2010 – current) (is happening together with the segmentation phase)
Personalized/tailored marketing possibilities have increased immensively due to big data collections and lots of modern technologies like
artificial intelligence, machine learning, neuromarketing and eye-tracking (can tell you what people watch, how long they watch it, etc. →
this can tell you which kind of food marketing is the most effective).
,Neuromarketing = it can tell you which brain areas are highlighted when a person is exposed to food marketing. This is interesting,
because you want to know what people think/feel/what their brains do when they watch a food advertisement. This can increase people’s
amount of consumptions of food.
The overall objective of food marketing = to increase the sales! This can also be an indirect effect (e.g. you want people to get to know your
brand and thereby increase your sales).
Capitalism is influencing the level of the effectiveness of food marketing. In the beginning is about a local market, but now with capitalism
it is different: different shareholders, etc.
This influences the whole game of food marketing.
The overly abundant food supply, combined with a society so affluent that most people can afford to buy more food than they
need, sets the stage for competition. The food industry must compete fiercely for every dollar spent on food, and food
companies expend extraordinary resources to develop market products that will sell, regardless of their effect on nutritional
status or waistlines.
→ the main aim of food marketing is to sell products within a brand. Because the competition is so much globalized and fierce,
they use all kinds of different instruments to be able to sell these food products, without taking into account that it can have
negative consequences within the ‘game they are playing’.
To satisfy stakeholders, food companies must convince people to eat more of their products or to eat their products instead of
those of competitors. They do so through advertising and public relations, of course, but also by working tirelessly to convince
government officials, nutrition professionals, and the media that their products promote health-or at least to not harm them.
Much of this work is a virtually invisible part of contemporary culture that attracts occasional notice.
→ it is very difficult for scientists or somebody that is interested in the health of people to convince a brand to not advertise
something, because there is this freedom of speech/advertisement. So it is very difficult to show people in this area that ‘this is
not the way to move forward’.
→ especially the goal to let people eat more is dangerous: it leads to diseases like obesity
Nowadays, there are ten large food companies who have an amazingly large share of the food products there are sold. However, many of
their food products are simply unhealthy. These companies are continuously seeking for other businesses to buy (for example companies
that is selling a kind of healthy food which is a competition for your product they sell this business and stop promoting this healthy food or
find a different way of bringing it in the market).
For example the tobacco industry influences the tobacco plants and are manipulating them so they include nicotine that is even more
addictive.
It is also showed that the food industry is the same: increasing the reinforcing value of a food product by manipulating it.
→ they don’t tell you that some food products are bad for your health. There is an example that they are making a sandwich
with Nutella. If you do this and you do it the same way as the package, you need 3 theaspoons (which is 12 sugar blocks!!) on
your sandwich. So if you believe the commercial and packaging of Nutella, this is crazy. This is with so many food products which
people buy all the time. So a lot of advertising of products is super misleading!
A lot of blue zones are islands, therefore people can live very healthy there (lots of nature etc.). However, people in ‘blue zones’ (healthy,
happy people) do eat healthy, do not drink a lot of alcohol etc. → so this makes a real important difference!!
Also, within the top 10 most obese nations, the first place is American Samoa, while it is an extremely beautiful island. This was because of
an Americanisation of the food industry there: a high level of fast-food restaurants, lots of unhealthy food marketing, possibility to eat
healthy was reduced, they received cars so they moved less.
In total, 51% of all food marketing is focused on sugary drinks, sugary cereals, sweets & snacks. Only less than 1% is focused on fruits and
vegetables!
Food marketing is not only to persuade people to do something, but also to inform them! However, lots of information is not true (for
example on fish you need to mention where the fish is packaged to know if it is still fresh. However, lots of packages put information on
the package about the fish which is not t
Food products look different and contain different stuff in different regions of the world. However, it is obligated to inform consumers
about this difference. Only when this is mentioned, there is honest food marketing. However, people can feel discriminated because they
feel that a food product is different than somewhere else in the world.
Lecture week 2: Mix of Food Marketing
Food marketing is everywhere, that is important to understand. It is very difficult to think outside of the box and to think that you have to
eat something else than you are seeing on television.
Formula1/Max Verstappen is a very implicit form of food marketing. Max is driving for the RedBull team.
Red Bull is advertising a lot of sports like Formula 1, which are all very cool to do. So this is what they want to show (that they are cool).
There are different documentaires that show that marketing is so focused on promoting you to eat unhealthy food.
Although there are also campaigns nowadays that encourage you to eat healthier (less meat, less sugar, more fruit and vegetables, etc.), it
is still really hard to encourage people to do this and is done less often than the promotion of unhealthy food.
, Sugar addiction
Most people (and animals), when they are born they already like sugar and want
to eat something with sugar. So you like sugary foods more than food without
sugar.
If you eat sugar, you release foods of neurological reward (like dopamine) and
thus it makes you happy. So what you will see is that your blood sugar will rise,
but after that moment your blood sugar levels fall rapidly and you become very
tired (‘after lunch dip’).
The problem with eating so much sugar in a short time period: you sort this
energy as fat and it remains there as fat. And, when the blood sugar levels fall,
you start craving for more sugar. Therefore, it is very difficult to stop eating
candy after two candies (because both your body and mind want it, your body
asks for it and your mind want it to become happy).
Food advertising tries to start this cycle and thus wants you to eat sugar.
Because of the marketing, you have craving for sugary food all the time and it
makes it super hard for you to not eat it and to buy and eat healthy food.
In some villages in the USA you cannot even buy healthy food, there is only
unhealthy food available.
Scientific research shows that there is a direct link of food advertisements on:
• Brand/product attitudes
→ because Max won the Formula1, people implicitly think that RedBull actually makes you faster and makes you win
• Cognitions
→ You remember RedBull better, it comes to your mind often and quickly
• Emotions
→ RedBull makes us happy because Max Verstappen won and we are happy because of that
• Eating/consumption behavior
→ This is a very important insight. That we (only) like RedBull more is not a problem, but if we consume it more, it becomes a real problem.
If you watch at how the videoclips are influencing us and you will drink the small bottle of Cola, you already drunk 22% of the sugar you
need on a whole day!
If you eat dorritos (a small package!) you already consumed 12% of the fat you use on a whole day. And that are only small packages, so if
you drink a normal bottle of Cola and you eat more chips, you already consumed a lot(!) of sugar and fat.
Main question: is there a causal relationship between food advertisements and food intake?
→ Frans is doing research about this to show to the Dutch government that this is a real problem.
Some colleagues of Frans show that in general, there is an association (so not a causal relationship!) between television viewing and
obesity even when you take into account potential confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, familial tendency to overweight,
and levels of physical activity.
There is the distinction between different sorts of food marketing:
1. “Old media/advertisements”
- Television
- Newspaper
- Radio
- Magazines
- Billboards
There are big differences in how many food marketing is present in a country. There is a significant difference in these different worlds. In
the USA there are food marketing and fastfood restaurants everywhere and for example way more than in Cuba. Also, people in the US
weigh a lot more overall than in Cuba (of course Cuba also has other problems).
2. “New Media/advertisements”
- Banners on websites
- Social media
- Product placements in movies, shows, series (products used in the serie)
- Promotional characters (frozen or Disney figures on cereals for example to make it more appealing and making it more
appealing and creating the added value to the food product to make sure people desire it and want to buy it)
- Celebrity endorsement
- Giveaways
But also:
- Sport stars candys/brands
Rogier Federor has his own Swiss chocolate brand and is advertising for it. Or a tennis player who released her own candy brand. And in
forms of car racing they are using M&M’s on the cars/clothing etc.
- Viral marketing
- Programma and event sponsorship (“The McDonalds Tennis Tournament”)
