Determining the impact of demarketing as a strategy to drive targeted consumption in soft drinks

Abstract

Consumer behaviour is of importance to marketers, organisations, and governments as consumption of unhealthy products increasingly create fiscal burdens through increasing non-communicable diseases and organisations face increased scrutiny for their role in fuelling unhealthy consumption. As a result, demarketing efforts have been utilised to curb unhealthy consumption behaviour. This research aimed to understand the impact of targeted preventative demarketing messaging on claimed consumption, purchase intent and brand perception specifically within the category of soft drinks, where the overall objective was to intervene and direct consumers from an unhealthy sugary soft drink variant to a healthy no sugar soft drink variant. An online experimental survey, testing three demarketing messages ranging from soft to hard was conducted. The target population was South African adults using purposive and snowballing sampling techniques. Data was collected from 542 participants. The findings of this research suggest that consumers can be transitioned from an unhealthy variant to a healthier one and that there is a relationship between targeted preventative demarketing messaging and purchase intent; however, results also showed no obvious relationship between brand perception and claimed consumption. The tactic of targeted preventative demarketing, which was introduced by the researcher through this study, adds to the field of demarketing, which future researchers can develop further. Targeted preventative demarketing is the promotion of limiting consumption of one product for another healthier or less harmful product within the same product or service offering; this activity may be done directly by a firm to protect its consumer base or by a government, non-governmental organisation or industry body agnostic of the impact on firm sales.