Abstract
Food and beverage marketing contributes to poor dietary choices among adults and children. As consumers spend more time on the Internet, food and beverage companies have increased their online marketing efforts. Studies have shown food companies’ online promotions use a variety of marketing techniques to promote mostly energy-dense, nutrient-poor products, but no studies have compared the online marketing techniques and nutritional quality of products promoted on food companies’ international websites. For this descriptive study, we developed a qualitative codebook to catalogue the marketing themes used on 18 international corporate websites associated with the world’s three largest fast food and beverage companies (i.e. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken). Nutritional quality of foods featured on those websites was evaluated based on quantitative Nutrient Profile Index scores and food category (e.g. fried, fresh). Beverages were sorted into categories based on added sugar content. We report descriptive statistics to compare the marketing techniques and nutritional quality of products featured on the company websites for the food and beverage company websites in two high-income countries (HICs), Germany and the United States, two upper-middle-income countries (UMICs), China and Mexico, and two lower-middle-income countries (LMICs), India and the Philippines. Of the 406 screenshots captured from company websites, 67·8% depicted a food or beverage product. HICs’ websites promoted diet food or beverage products/healthier alternatives (e.g. baked chicken sandwich) significantly more often on their pages (25%), compared to LMICs (14·5%). Coca-Cola featured diet products significantly more frequently on HIC websites compared to LMIC websites. Charities were featured more often on webpages in LMICs (15·4%) compared to UMICs (2·6%) and HICs (2·3%). This study demonstrates that companies showcase healthier products in wealthier countries and advertise their philanthropic activities in lower income countries, which is concerning given the negative effect of nutrition transition (double burden of overnutrition and undernutrition) on burden of non-communicable diseases and obesity in lower income countries.
Highlights
Poor dietary intake is associated with obesity [1]
In order to assess how these companies use marketing techniques across different countries, this study aimed to: (1) use a qualitative codebook to identify the types of marketing techniques used on 18 international fast food and beverage company websites; (2) examine the nutritional quality of the products marketed on those websites; and (3) use descriptive statistics to compare the marketing strategies and nutritional quality of promoted products across high-income countries (HICs), upper middle income countries (UMICs), and lower-middle income countries (LMICs)
The Nutrient Profile Index (NPI) model was used to score the nutritional quality of the foods, but because 11 of the websites lacked nutrition information, we supplemented this analytic approach by categorizing foods shown in the screenshots as possessing component/s that were: (1) fried; (2) cooked; (3) fresh (Table 2)
Summary
Poor dietary intake is associated with obesity [1]. Exposure to food and beverage marketing leads adults and children to increase short-term food consumption [2,3,4]. Digital food marketing includes advertising through online advergames (e.g. website games intended to promote a brand), [7, 8] placement of ads on websites popular among specific demographic groups (e.g. children), [9,10,11,12] promotion of food products on branded websites, [13, 14] as well as through mobile devices and social media websites (e.g. Facebook) [15, 16] These studies have shown that the majority of foods promoted on websites are energydense, nutrient-poor foods, [9,10,11,12,13, 16] and children who play online advergames are more likely to consume nutrient-poor snack foods and fewer fruits and vegetables, [7] and increase energy intake regardless of the health profile of the product being advertised [17].
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