Ahold’s ‘Healthy Ideas’ Keeps It Simple

JON SPRINGER

LAS VEGAS — Fusing shoppers' desire for healthier foods with their need to keep things simple resulted in the Healthy Ideas shelf-tag program at Stop & Shop and Giant-Landover stores, a company official told attendees at the FMI 2010 Show here this month.

Healthy Ideas identifies products at Stop & Shop and Giant stores that meet legal criteria of “healthy” as defined by the Food and Drug Administration and bolstered by input from Ahold's own nutritionists, other government agencies and a Harvard Medical School physician, said Andrea Astrachan, vice president of consumer affairs for Ahold USA, the parent company of the Stop & Shop and Giant chains. All products meeting the criteria — except those in categories Ahold chose not to rank such as meat, candy and beverages — are identified by a symbol on shelf tags, advertising and other marketing.

The program evolved from company research revealing that Giant and Stop & Shop shoppers were more health-conscious than the retailer had previously realized, then crafted to fit in with what the organization also knew about its shoppers: Mainly, they were typically harried moms who didn't have the time or the stomach for a complicated product-ranking system.

“We learned, surprisingly, that eating healthy was even more important to shoppers than even time, money or taste,” Astrachan said.

This showed that Ahold had an opportunity to pursue a program identifying its better-for-you offerings, Astrachan said. Further research revealed that two-thirds of its shoppers felt the program would improve their image of the store. But, she added, “we also knew our shoppers would want an easy way to find those foods.”

According to Astrachan, the company tested a variety of ways to do that, including using a “tiered” system not unlike Hannaford Bros.' Guiding Stars and another that scored products on a numeric scale. But other than one group of shoppers that preferred the numeric system, the majority preferred the use of a single symbol.

Ahold's first tactic to launch the system was to engage its employees, Astrachan said. The company offered a 5% discount on Healthy Ideas products in addition to the 5% discount it typically offered employees. It also watched the shopping baskets of volunteer employee-shoppers to understand how the products and categories entered the basket.

The consumer launch includes calling out the products and recipes in circulars, televisions ads, in-store radio and on-line programs, including a “swap-out” application on the website to help shoppers find healthy alternatives to ingredients from their recipe box.

“Consumers today are really expecting us to take the lead on health and nutrition,” she said. “They weren't expecting that 10 or 15 years ago.”

Healthy Ideas is one tactic within a “Healthy Living” pillar of Ahold's corporate responsibility strategy.