KELLOGG'S has announced it will stop promoting Pop Tarts to 10-year-olds and McDonald's says Happy Meals promoted to children willhave fewer calories and less fat. Generally, we think of businessessucceeding by offering products and services people want, even ifwhat people want isn't particularly good for them. Are Americanbusinesses going soft just to stop their customers from gettingsofter?
Part of the answer is in the evolving role of the Internet andsocial networking. Product successes follow from free, butimperfect, choices. Increasingly, the Internet and a willingness touse lawsuits will supplement market forces in telling businesseswhat they should and should not do.
Kellogg's started as a company founded to promote healthy eating.C.W. Post was so impressed that he founded a competing company, alsoseeking to offer healthful breakfast foods. But, over time,Kellogg's found that many people, particularly children, prefertheir dried, pressed flakes of corn sprinkled with sugar. Or betteryet, thin toaster-fitting pastry filled with all manner of sweetstuffing--a sort of flat jelly doughnut.
Proof that Kellogg's was selling what people wanted is evident byits position as a dominant cereal food company not just in America,but worldwide. Over many years of responding to market demand,Kellogg's eventually found itself with shelves of relativelyunhealthful products. Now, Kellogg's says that 50 percent of theproducts it markets to children do not meet its own recentlyannounced nutrition standards.
McDonald's started with a milk-shake machine salesman bent onsuccess and a production-line approach to satisfying the growingdemand for a fast, tasty hamburger. Throw in the Happy Meal,complete with a toy to match the latest children's movie, and youhave something for the whole family. Generations of parents havepassed by perfectly respectable, even quiet, little restaurants tosit on hard, plastic chairs and watch their children eat burgers andfries and play with their new toys. And McDonald's became a globalpowerhouse.
But then people started connecting the dots. Children and adultswere getting bigger and bigger and BIGGER. Who was to blame?Television and video games were likely suspects. Parents could havesaid no to sugary cereals and didn't. The lunch crowd could havedriven past the golden arches instead of driving through them.Certainly, at times people were making poor choices. Sometimespeople lacked the information they needed to appreciate the fullimplications of their choices. One Pop Tart may be fine, but a dailydiet may not be.
Imperfect information played a role and so did nature. While thedevil may not make us eat poorly, Mother Nature may play a hand.Humans seem to have a rather unhealthy preference for things sweetor salty. We just happen to be made that way. That doesn't meanMother Nature wants us to be fat. Like a loving grandmother, shejust tends to overdo it sometimes. But plates full of grandma'scookies should be few and far between if we want to stay trim andhealthy. Otherwise, we will continue in the current direction,fighting a growing list of health problems, including an explosionof type-2 diabetes in children.
Finally, markets can produce unwanted results. Thanks to mywatchful wife, not a single Pop Tart has ever graced our breakfasttable. Nor do I ever come home late at night smelling of a Big Mac.That also means we cannot express our displeasure in the marketplaceby stopping or slowing our purchases. We are not players in the PopTart or Big Mac markets. This is where the Internet and the lawyerscome in.
Now, more easily than ever, like-minded people concerned withwhat companies do or do not do can find each other. Grassrootsorganizations spring up as fast as new Web sites. Any decentInternet search of "healthy eating" or "obesity" will produce aflurry of .com, .org and .gov sites. When enough people get togetherto voice a concern, they can garner the resources needed to hire alawyer and sue a company. Even if a company wins such a lawsuit, itloses. What company wants to be on the evening news celebrating itsability to defeat a bunch of concerned parents?
Here is what we can expect in the future: Adults and childrenwill continue to eat food that is, relatively speaking, not good forthem. Like smoking or other unhealthful choices, each generationwill need to learn. Companies will respond by continuing to offerproducts to satisfy that demand. More nutrition information will beavailable at our fingertips to help us make informed choices. And wecan also expect the Internet to play an increasing role inconnecting concerned adults seeking to exert public pressure onbusinesses to conform to standards, which will often be vague.
Bill Keep is a professor of marketing at Quinnipiac University,275 Mount Carmel Ave., Hamden 06518.
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