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Grocery Line Typecasting
| Article
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16185 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1989 |
2,351 Words |
| Author
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Elyse Levine
Elyse Levine is an instructor in the Nutrition Communications
Program at Boston University. Her articles on health and
nutrition appear regularly in Health Journal. |
While waiting in line at the supermarket cash register, take a look at the contents of other shoppers' shopping carts: The foods we select can tell a story about us--where we came from, our present needs and drives, and where we're going.
For example, in our line meet Betty Belonger, a middle-aged housewife who reads a tabloid while she waits to unload her national brand-name soft drinks, baking ingredients, and canned ham--her husband's favorite. She carriers discount coupons offered by food companies and supermarkets.
Fred Follower, wearing a suit with a designer label, buys mixers for hard liquor, beer nuts, pretzels, frozen stuffed potatoes, and a thick steak. He's listening to management-training tapes, but thinking about how he's going to make this month's payment on his new sports car.
Jill Joiner, a university professor, divorced, organizes a phone list for her environmental group. Her groceries include fruit-flavored club soda, frozen mixed vegetables, microwavable "taco helper," fresh strawberries (out of season), and premium-priced ice cream.
The psychographic game
Chances are good that you've played this game, which marketers call "spot the psychographic." Perhaps you've even done this analysis on yourself.
Is psychographics folklore folly? Unsubstantiated pop psychology? Not according to the food industry giants. The extent to which food choices describe individual personalities is limited, but the combined studies of anthropology and marketing do provide substantive information on how groups with similar characteristics choose from more than 100,000 foods every day.
To health professionals, food choices ultimately spell out the nutritional status of individuals. However, few people are guided solely by nutrition when they make food choices; taste, economics, availability, traditions, and status all play a part in dietary decisions.
"An anthropologist who knows what the members of a society eat already knows a lot about them," say Peter Farb and George Armelagos in their book Consuming Passions. "And once the anthropologist finds out where, when, and with whom the food is eaten, just about everything else can be inferred about
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