Loyalty Shopper Card Intervention Creates Behavior Change

Individually-targeted Food Incentives Impact on Grocery Purchases

Poor diet is the number one risk factor for the leading cause of death in the United States. Despite efforts, diet has proven resilient to change and new approaches are needed to prevent diet-related illness. University of Rhode Island researchers explored whether individually targeted incentives can increase the adoption of healthier food patterns to cost-effectively improve health. Researchers used an individual’s past food choices to inform the targeted food incentives to improve food quality purchases.

FFAR funded the research, through a New Innovator Award, led by Dr. Maya Vadiveloo, associate professor at the University of Rhode Island and registered dietitian. In The Smart Cart Study, researchers conducted a randomized controlled cross over study to evaluate the effect of personalized healthy food incentives on grocery purchase quality and other diet-related metrics.

Targeted Incentives & Educations Created Behavior Change

Vadiveloo and her team used data from shopper loyalty cards at an independent grocer to identify areas where a person could improve the healthfulness of their diet. Then, they developed a decision tree- based system to send personalized coupons to individuals based on their preferences as well as areas that would improve the healthfulness of their grocery purchases. Researchers provided nutrition education and recipes along with the associated coupons.

From this intervention, researchers found a meaningful and significant improvement of healthfulness of groceries purchased. While the types of foods that people purchased varied, the largest changes were observed for total fruit, refined grains, whole fruit and dairy.

Next Steps for Research

• Continuing work in individualized incentives to expand from a decision tree model to AI, allowing for more individualized product and recipe recommendations.
• Awarded K01 grant to adapt and test novel machine learning to deliver personalized recommendations and incentives for adults at higher cardiovascular risk.

Scientific Publications

1. Vadiveloo M*, Atlas S, Buchanan A, Guan X†, Parker H†, and Thorndike A. The effect of targeted healthy food incentives on the dietary quality of grocery purchase: results from the randomized controlled Smart Cart Study. JAMA Network Open. (2021) Feb 1;4(2):e2030921. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.30921.
2. Parker H†, de Aruajo C†, Thorndike A, Vadiveloo M*. The utility of household Grocery Purchase Quality Index scores as an individual diet quality metric. British Journal of Nutrition (2020). Dec 3:1-9. doi: 10.1017/S0007114520004833.
3. Vadiveloo M*, Atlas S, Parker H† Guan X†, Thorndike A. Evaluating the effect of individually-targeted food incentives on grocery purchases: The smart cart study protocol for a randomized controlled cross-over trial (2020)v. Contemporary Clinical Trials Feb 21;91:105966
4. Vadiveloo M*, Juul F, Sotos Prieto M, Parekh N. Novel approaches to assessing dietary quality in the food system: combining methods to enhance measurement for dietary surveillance and interventions. Revise and resubmit. Advances in Nutrition.