News from Tuesday's election that after months of debate, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has effectively banned the Happy Meal. If you want to buy a kids meal at McDonald's (or elsewhere that includes a toy), that meal will have to satisfy certain nutritional guidelines, including caps on sodium and the inclusion of half cups of fruit or vegetables. The move is aimed at reducing childhood obesity.
Let me preface my comments by saying that I share the goal of trying to promote healthier eating, and also believe that parental choice is not necessarily perfect and could be helped if there were healthier options more available. But in this case, by forgetting or ignoring some basic tenets of strategy, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors may have achieved the opposite.
The underlying theory behind the ban is simple: children want fast food and they want it more if they get a toy. This assumption is born out by evidence. The toy is bait. Remove it and the children will want the meals less, and parents won't be pressured into buying them.
But let's imagine for a moment that McDonald's sold Happy Meals with toys while another chain did not. If the meals were equivalent in the eyes of the children — say, each had 10 units of the "bad stuff" — then McDonald's would win. So the other chain, in order to compete, would have to either include a toy or make the meals more attractive by including, say, 15 units of the bad stuff: more fat disguised as potatoes or what have you.<snip>
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/how_san_francisco_is_making_mo.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
