Page 194 - Social Marketing for Public Health Global Trends and Success Stories

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Summary 167

Great efforts have been made to promote the proposal of healthy public
procurement for vending machines: it has been presented in national confer-
ences; published in a specialized national health magazine (mainly addressed to
Italian Local Health Services and to health professionals); and sent to some min-
istries, the Emilia-Romagna regional administration, and some Italian provin-
cial and municipal administrations.

S UMM A RY

After two years, it can be said that the main success of the Choose Health project has
been its capacity to increase the community’s interest and attention, as demon-
strated by its developments. An analysis of the experimentation specifies some as-
pects that must be taken into consideration when developing such a project:

• Creation of an easy-to-recognize healthy product identity is necessary,
because customers are more attracted by brand-name foods.
• Choice of a healthy food portfolio is crucial to the success of the project. In
fact, the traditional food portfolio appears too often to be a dominant
alternative.
• Pricing strategies should lower healthy product costs: Because traditional
brand-name foods have a great appeal to customers, economic advantages
should be offered to favor healthy product purchases.
• Coherence of health communication activities is needed. Health messages
should be specific and suitable to the vending machine context. In this case,
nutrition and physical activity appear to be the best theme for the objective
of the project.
• The position of healthy products, and of the stickers used to illustrate them,
should be rigorously defined and should be the same in all vending
machines, in order to make healthy foods easier to find.
• A good definition of habits and purchasing behavior for vending machines
is requested in order to face the lack of information regarding behavioral
patterns and contextual preferences.
For more information regarding the project, see www.ppsmodena.it/vending.