Increasing consumer demand for safe and nutritious foods is essential for improving diets and nutrition globally. USAID Advancing Nutrition is developing guidance to strengthen marketing approaches for improving consumer demand for nutrient-rich foods and identifying measures to help implementers understand program impacts on consumer demand.
Key activities
The private sector has demonstrated success for increasing demand for a wide variety of goods and products. Programs aiming to improve diets and nutrition can learn from private sector experiences to strengthen demand for safe and nutritious foods. Using established marketing standards and adapting marketing techniques, programs can achieve a similar level of success through efforts that are ethical, resonate in diverse cultural contexts, and delight audiences. USAID Advancing Nutrition developed a comprehensive guide on using best practices from the private sector and social marketing techniques to support demand generation for safe and nutritious foods. Using real world examples, the guide helps implementers understand target audience behaviors, the power of establishing a brand for healthy diets, and the components of a compelling campaign. Learn more about Generating Demand for Healthy Diets.
USAID Advancing Nutrition collaborates with a range of program implementers to identify and test measures of consumer demand that provide information on factors that prevent or support consumers in purchasing nutrient-rich foods. Programs often measure the quantity of nutritious foods sold or consumed. However, these limited outcomes do not measure consumer demand adequately or capture the rich information about what influences demand for foods. Consumer demand is not defined by a single measure, and some measures have a larger weight than others across diverse contexts. By identifying a common set of measures that can be adapted for specific program needs, USAID Advancing Nutrition is supporting implementers to understand how and whether their efforts are influencing demand for safe and nutritious foods. The guidance will enable comparison of approaches, support systematic and timely adaptations, and generate a larger evidence base. It will also allow implementers to make program adaptations to strengthen their ability to achieve diet and nutrition outcomes. Learn more about Measuring Consumer Demand for Healthy Diets.