“Finding Healthy Online”: A project to share and initiate research-industrial insight on how online supermarket food environments can support healthier more sustainable diets for consumers

Other investigators

To be announced

Description

Digital food retail environments are used more than ever before and are influencing what people eat as well as public health. To support website design that facilitates healthier and more sustainable food purchases, the project aims to build an academic-industry relationship with nutritionists, psychologists and a digital food retail space (Ocado Retail). Together, we will co-design and conduct initial research which involves eye tracking real-life shoppers, to explore how consumers interact with features of this supermarket website and what influences food choices.

Project keywords

(1) Digital food environments (2) Online supermarkets (3) Eye-tracking (4) Consumer behaviour

Outputs

Dr Sally Moore and Dr Yael Benn have recruited the Research Project Coordinator (Leeds) and two research assistants (Manchester) to support project delivery. We are on track with our collection of pilot study data, with collection of eye-tracking and associated data (interviews, etc.) from 4 participants (real-life shoppers) and have begun to analyse preliminary results. We have submitted an abstract which describes the pilot study protocol that was accepted, enabling us to present this at the American Society for Nutrition’s NUTRITION2024 scientific conference in Chicago. We have also, as planned, hosted the first of six “BIV” industry-academic interaction meetings with the industry Partner (Ocado Retail). These meeting have included guest speakers from both industry and academia, who have outlined the evidence and new technologies in the areas of digital retail food environments. In addition, we have developed several multi-media dissemination and public/industry engagement resources including a project webpage, one-pager infographics for dissemination, and we are working with communication teams on a video and artists “sketch” to illustrate this complex project idea.

Email contact

s.moore2@leeds.ac.uk