Promoting Fruit and Vegetable Consumption: Are Coupons More Effective than Pure Price Discounts?
by
Diansheng Dong and
Ephraim LeibtagEconomic Research Report No. (ERR-96) 31 pp, June 2010
The U.S. Department of Agriculture administers food and
nutrition assistance programs that promote fruit and vegetable
consumption. But consumption remains relatively low, with price
cited as the main deterrent.
What Is the Issue?
A price-discount strategy in conjunction with existing programs
might encourage participants in food and nutrition assistance
programs to consume more fruits and vegetables. This study looks at
coupons and price discounts, two methods of lowering the cost of
fruits and vegetables, and uses household purchase data and a
consumer demand model to determine which method may be more
successful in encouraging produce consumption.
What Did the Study Find?
Coupons influence consumer behavior through a dual effect-a
price-discount effect and an informational advertising effect.
Because of this dual effect, the use of a coupon to increase fruit
and vegetable purchases may be more effective than a pure
price-discount policy or other noncoupon promotion.
• For a 10-percent coupon usage rate, lowering prices by 10
percent with a coupon would increase average weekly quantity
purchases by 2 percent for fruits and 2.1 percent for vegetables.
(A"coupon usage" rate is defined as the percentage of purchases in
which households use the coupon when buying fruits and vegetables
in a given time period.) A 30-percent usage rate simulation shows a
larger effect-over 6 percent for fruits and over 6.5 percent for
vegetables-while a 50-percent usage rate shows just over a
10-percent effect for both fruits and vegetables.
• By comparison, a pure price discount of 10 percent would likely
have about a 6-percent effect for both fruits and vegetables.
• If coupon usage turned out to be less than 30 percent, then the
overall effect of coupons would be lower than a pure price discount
policy because the price discount applies to everybody (it has a
100-percent usage rate).
• The informational effect of coupons might decline as coupon use
became more common or if coupons were distributed electronically
instead of in paper form.
• Even a 10-percent increase in purchases of fruits and
vegetables-the result assuming the highest coupon usage rate-would
still leave consumption at about 65 percent of the recommended
level of 5 or more servings a day.
The success of attempts to use coupons to increase consumption
of fruits and vegetable by low-income households would depend on
the distribution method (paper or electronic), on the number of
households that actually use the coupons, on the size of the
discount offered by the coupon, and on the coupon's ease of
use.
How Was the Study Conducted?
This analysis relies on data from the 2004 Nielsen Homescan
panel. The data include household purchase information for fruits
and vegetables, coupon usage information, and households'
demographic characteristics. The 2004 panel was made up of 8,482
households that reported purchases of products marked with bar
codes as well as other purchases.
To estimate the dual effect of coupons on fruit and vegetable
demand, the marked purchase renewal model was used, including three
variables that may affect purchase quantity and/or frequency: (1)
the gross price paid, (2) an indicator variable that tracks whether
a coupon was used, and (3) the value of a redeemed coupon used
during a given shopping trip. Elasticity estimates from the
analysis then were used to conduct a simulation to compare the
effect of coupons as compared with a pure price discount on fruit
and vegetable purchase behavior.