Poster Presentation ANZOS-Breakthrough Discoveries Joint Annual Scientific Meeting 2018

Investigating business outcomes of healthy community food retail strategies: a systematic scoping review (#332)

Miranda R Blake 1 2 , Kathryn Backholer 1 2 , Emily Lancsar 3 4 , Tara Boelsen-Robinson 1 2 , Catherine Mah 5 , Julie Brimblecombe 6 , Christina Zorbas 2 , Natassja Billich 6 , Anna Peeters 2
  1. School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. Global Obesity Centre, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia
  3. Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  4. Department of Health Services Research and Policy, Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
  5. Faculty of Healthy, Dalhousie University, NS, Canada
  6. Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

Purpose: To identify the types of business outcomes of healthy food and beverage retail strategies that have been reported on to date. The overarching aim of this work is to understand how business outcomes may affect the implementation and sustainability of healthy food retail strategies.

Methods: A systematic scoping review was undertaken to map this emerging research space. Peer-reviewed and grey literature were searched from medical, business and psychology databases. Titles were screened and cross-checked. Key inclusion criteria included qualitative or quantitative real-world food or beverage retail strategies designed to improve the healthiness of the non-alcoholic food and beverage environment within stores through changes to the consumer nutrition environment (e.g. changes to product, price, promotion or placement), and reporting store or chain-level outcomes on factors affecting commercial viability, retailer or customer perspectives, or societal outcomes. Exclusion criteria included hypothetical interventions and descriptive studies. We conducted a narrative synthesis to map the range of business outcomes reported for healthy food retail strategies.

Results: 11,682 titles were screened for inclusion with 107 included for review. We identified a number of significant themes: objective and subjective measures of commercial viability including overall item sales, revenue and patronage; and customer satisfaction with strategy were the most frequently examined business outcomes. Few studies examined retailer perspectives, such as attitude towards being able to positively influence consumer food choice.

Conclusions: Examination of business outcomes to date has been largely limited to objective commercial viability outcomes. A better understanding of the effect of healthy food retail strategies on retailer perspectives, and their interrelationship with commercial viability and customer perspectives, may assist in identifying strategies considered to be feasible and sustainable by retailers. These considerations are likely to be critical to encourage wide-scale food environment changes required to promote healthier population food and beverage purchases.