Marketing fortified rice: Effects of aspirational messaging and association with free distribution
通过孟加拉国的实地实验，研究了励志营销信息与公共免费分发信息对消费者购买强化大米意愿的联合影响，发现两者结合能显著提升愿意支付溢价的消费者比例。
Fortification of staple foods is among the most cost-effective public health interventions. In settings where mandatory fortification is not feasible, providing fortified foods through public safety net programs and building private demand can be implemented in parallel to maximize coverage. However, little is known about what marketing messages are most effective at increasing the demand for fortified foods. Further, as governments scale up fortification of foods distributed through safety net programs, understanding the effect of knowledge about this on consumer demand will be important for crafting communication strategies. Drawing on insights from the literature on marketing and consumer behavior, we hypothesize that a message linking fortified rice, an unfamiliar product in this setting, to a known, aspirational product, can increase demand. We test the individual and joint impacts of an aspirational marketing message and information about the public distribution of fortified rice through a framed field experiment eliciting willingness to pay for rice fortified with six micronutrients in Chandpur District, Bangladesh. We find that a message which combines aspirational positioning and information on public distribution increases the proportion of participants willing to pay a premium at least equal to the cost of fortification by 19 percentage points. The results suggest that any negative impact on willingness to pay associated with free distribution is outweighed by the credibility distribution lends to health claims about the product.