Social Meaning in Supermarkets as a Direct Route to Improve Parents’ Fruit and Vegetable Purchases

Direct and indirect attempts to increase parents’ fruit and vegetable purchases have had little, if any, success. Most of the disappointing results are reported in the grocery environment. In this context, embedding messages with social meaning may have a significant impact on current campaigns. We use the focus theory of normative conduct as an alternative theoretical framework and suggest that social norms that are salient, easy to interpret, and easy to compare against individuals’ behavior may improve current attempts to increase parents’ fruit and vegetable purchases in retail environments.