The effect of item placement on snack food choices from physical and online menus

This 2022 article exposes how the placement of food items on menus can have an influential role on people’s food choices. There were two studies conducted to determine which conditions affect the participants’ food decisions. Healthy items were placed on the top, middle, and bottom sections of the snack menu. The first study used a physical paper menu and consisted of 8 unhealthy and 4 healthy items, while the second study published online menus arranged in three rows of four. In each study, the subjects selected one food item from the three experimental menus, before completing the Revised Restraint Scale (a measure of dietary restraint). The food item conditions in study 1 did not appear to predict healthiness of food choice. On the other hand, study 2 demonstrated that people chose from the first section of the menu more often than from the middle or last sections. Dietary restraint did not moderate the effect of item placement conditions on food choice. It can be said that item placement techniques could represent a potentially powerful tool in promoting healthy food choices from online snack menus. [NPID: snacks, food choices, food decisions, item placement, perception, dietary restraint, menu, online menu, health promotion]

Year: 2021

Reference: Gynell, I., Kemps, E., Prichard, I., & Tiggemann, M. (2022). The effect of item placement on snack food choices from physical and online menus. Appetite, 169, 105792. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105792