LoCard - Health- and environment-related purchase behavior through loyalty card data

Goal: LoCard group aims to understand what characterizes health-related purchasing behavior: who are the individuals making healthy and unhealthy or sustainable choices, when and where are they made, and what measures can influence the behavior most effectively. The research relies on high resolution loyalty card data with ~47 000 consenting card holders across Finland and a longitudinal follow-up of three years (2016-18).

Consumers’ eating behavior holds major implications for health, well-being, environment and society at large. LoCard research group focuses on exploring these themes through vast amount of loyalty card data. In close collaboration with S-Group, a major Finnish co-operative, the retailer’s customers are asked for permission to share their loyalty card data for research purposes. No individual consumer or household can be identified from the data, and only such data is being used that the customer has granted permission. With this data, LoCard researchers strive at understanding, for example, consumers’ behavior and attitudes toward food healthfulness and sustainability.