New research reveals impact of price discounts and multi-buy offers on consumption of unhealthy foods

In a paper published in Health Economics, researchers examined the extent to which price promotions increase purchasing of unhealthy food and drink items, including those that are frequently consumed by households with children, such as children's cereal, children’s biscuits and ketchup. 

The study aims to evaluate policy set out by the Department of Health and Social Care to combat child obesity in the UK, which includes a ban on multi- buy promotions for high-in-saturated-fat, salt-or-sugar products from April 2022. 

It is the first paper to bring econometric methods, developed and used in marketing, to analyse a public health issue, focusing on the health of consumers rather than the sales of retailers. 

For all food and drink categories analysed, researchers found that purchases are made more frequently and at higher volumes when goods are being price promoted. Total price reductions tend to have a bigger impact on volume purchased than multi-buy offers. Given that products that are high in sugar, fat and salt are more likely to be promoted, price promotions are highly likely to have a negative effect on people’s diets.  

Researchers found that removing price discounts is more effective for reducing purchase volume compared to removing multi-buy offers for ten out of twelve food and drink groups. 

Dr Walter Beckert, one of the authors, said: “We can conclude from our results that public health policy to restrict price promotions could be effective in reducing consumption of unhealthy food and drinks. In particular, it would be important to focus not only on multi-buys but on total price reductions, which appear more likely to cause over-consumption or food waste.”