Understanding interactions with the food environment: An exploration of supermarket food shopping routines in deprived neighbourhoods

Abstract

Despite a sustained academic interest in the environmental determinants of diet, relatively little is known about the ways in which individuals interact with their neighbourhood food environment and the use of its most important element, the supermarket. This qualitative study explores how residents of deprived neighbourhoods shop for food and how the supermarket environment influences their choices. Go-along interviews were conducted with 26 residents of Sandwell, a uniformly deprived metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, UK. Routine approaches to food shopping are characterised in terms of planning and reliance on the supermarket environment. Four distinct routines are identified: chaotic and reactive; working around the store; item-by-item; and restricted and budgeted. This suggests that residents of deprived neighbourhoods do not have uniform responses to food environments. Responses to supermarket environments appear to be mediated by levels of individual autonomy. A better understanding of how residents of deprived neighbourhoods interact with their food environment may help optimise environmental interventions aimed at improving physical access to food in these places.

Introduction

Research which investigates the role of the neighbourhood environment in determining diet quality has become increasingly important in recent years (McKinnon et al., 2009). A large body of primarily epidemiological research has emerged which investigates how the structure and organisation of the neighbourhood food environment (operationalised as the availability of grocery stores and fast-food restaurants) might influence food purchasing patterns and hence diet and diet-related chronic diseases (Cheadle et al., 1991, Diez-Roux et al., 1999, Franco et al., 2008, Morland et al., 2006, Morland et al., 2002). Much of this work has been undertaken in the USA and has demonstrated that neighbourhood availability of components of a healthy diet may be an important mediating factor between neighbourhood deprivation and diet quality (Morland et al., 2002, Zenk et al., 2005, Zenk et al., 2006).

In the UK, it has been found that food consumption varies between neighbourhoods and that living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood may be independently associated with poor diet (Anderson and Hunt, 1992, Forsyth et al., 1994, Shohaimi et al., 2004). However, much of this work takes a ‘black-box’ approach and does not tend to explore whether there are variations in how residents of deprived neighbourhoods respond to the neighbourhood food environment, and what shape these varying responses may take. Much research in this area relies on a simple conceptual model suggesting that better access to a wider range of food stores in deprived areas is associated with improved diet. However, environmental influences on diet can also be understood as relational and dynamic (Cummins et al., 2007, Curtis, 2004, Jackson et al., 2006, Pred, 1984). Within this context, the act of shopping for food is a key link in the causal pathway as it is the primary means through which many individuals interact with their neighbourhood food environment.

Supermarkets are the dominant format of food and grocery retailing in the UK (Degeratu et al., 2000, Miller, 1997, Wrigley et al., 2009). The four largest UK supermarket chains are Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons which between them account for 75.4% of all food shopping (Henderson Research, 2011). Smaller, local grocery stores are increasingly being overtaken by these large chain supermarket retailers (Everts and Jackson, 2009, Grewal et al., 1998). Regular ‘big shops’ at supermarkets interspersed by ‘top-up’ trips at local stores to meet daily needs is a well-documented approach to household food shopping (Grewal et al., 1998, Henderson Research, 2011) and thus the supermarket is central to the modern food shopping experience (Bowlby, 1997). Supermarkets appeal to a broad range of people as they market themselves as offering choice and value. Supermarkets are made appealing to customers through price promotions, environmental manipulation (such as lighting, aromas and muzak) and customer comforts (Bell and Valentine, 1997). In-store decision making about food purchasing is thus a complex activity affected by a variety of environmental cues and it has been suggested that theorising food shopping as a linear and rational process (as is done in much existing public health research) may thus be unhelpful in understanding food shopping behaviour (Gram, 2010).

Work in consumption offers insights into supermarket food shopping behaviour not usually employed in diet and nutrition research. Mass produced consumer objects, like shop-bought food, are encountered and used by individuals who incorporate them into their personal repertoires of consumption (Woodward, 2007). At present, there is little observational and ethnographic research on these shopping behaviours (Jackson and Holbrook, 1995, Miller, 2001) and even less that focuses directly on food shopping (Gram, 2010). Ethnographic investigation of how individuals use their neighbourhood food environment, especially in large, highly designed marketing spaces like supermarkets, is particularly rare.

The ways in which people behave in-store and make decisions about what foods to purchase can be described with reference to routinised behaviours, and to differing levels of individual agency. Agency, here, is taken to mean the reflexive monitoring of personal conduct and behaviour of individuals whilst shopping (Jackson and Holbrook, 1995). Routines can be understood as strategies of decision making that simplify daily activities and tasks (Jastran et al., 2009). Ilmonen (2001) argues that these types of repetitive consumption can be understood as largely unreflective behaviours. From this standpoint, supermarket food shopping has the potential to be either a planned and critical enactment of agency or an unreflective and reactive set of habitual behaviours.

In this paper, we investigate food shopping using qualitative observational and interview data from 26 adult participants in Sandwell, West Midlands. Sandwell is a metropolitan borough covering a geographical area of 85.58 km², with a population of approximately 292,800. Sandwell is the 12th most deprived local authority in England (Sandwell PCT, 2010). More than 30% of adults in Sandwell are on benefits of some kind and rates of adult economic activity are lower than the national average (Black Country Consortium, 2011). Sandwell faces a variety of health challenges commonly associated with deprived areas. Smoking and teenage pregnancy rates are significantly higher than the national average in the adult population. Life expectancies for both males and females are significantly lower than the national figures. Fruit and vegetable daily consumption is significantly lower than the national average and both child and adult obesity rates are significantly higher, with 25.9% of year 6 children obese (NHS, 2011, Sandwell, 2008). The paper explores the supermarket food shopping behaviours of a sample of residents of deprived neighbourhoods and explores how they decide what to buy. The aims of this paper are: to investigate how the supermarket environment influences food shopping behaviours; to describe how individuals vary in their response to the supermarket environment; and to consider the implications of this work for research on the environmental determinants of diet.