Files
Abstract
We investigate consumer response to various types of advertising for fruits and
vegetables—a food category which health officials uniformly agree is significantly underconsumed
in the United States. Using an adult, non-student subject pool of participants in the
experiment, consumers’ response to different broad-based (not used currently in the United
States) and commodity-specific (widely used in the United States) advertising campaigns for
various fruits and vegetables is empirically measured. We show that broad-based advertising
effects far exceed those of the commodity-specific advertising and discuss the implications of the
effective fruit and vegetable advertising programs on caloric intake and obesity management
policies.