Opinion – Why? Economês in good Portuguese: How to help consumers make better choices?

It is very difficult to keep accurate information about the different products we buy. We often pay attention to price, but there are other attributes at play. The other day, at the supermarket, I was comparing prices of yogurt brands when I noticed that they have different amounts — something that is almost imperceptible when you look only at the packaging. All this time, I bought the brand I thought was the cheapest, but I was probably taking less of the product home.

And we are “fooled” even by the price tag. As we have already commented on our platform, consumers tend to pay more attention to the first digits of a number than the last ones. As a result, they would have the impression that, for example, R$9.99 is closer to R$9.00 than to R$10.00, incorrectly interpreting how expensive a certain item is. This could explain why stores choose prices with this weird configuration, ending in nines.

If it is difficult to capture information on the quantity of the product and even the price, what about the nutritional content? Small print, with a lot of information difficult to interpret for a layman. It is even difficult to know what marketing is for a product to look healthy. I remember one time I bought a cereal bar with a layer of chocolate on top. The packaging said “no added sugar”. It looked like a joke.

Public policies that compel companies to provide concise, transparent and standardized information are important in this context. An example in Brazil is the distinction, for fruit-based beverages, between juice, nectar and soft drink. I confess that I changed my behavior after these designations were implemented. Before, I didn’t know I was buying something that wasn’t juice.

But my personal experience (or that of a couple of people) proves nothing. In Chile, however, a policy of providing information to consumers could be evaluated by a team of economists. And the results are quite interesting.

Implemented in the middle of the last decade, the law began to oblige companies to place seals on the packaging of products with a high concentration of sugar, calories, sodium or saturated fats. The authors of the study had access to data on purchases at the Walmart supermarket chain, the largest in the country, and documented, for the three years after the seals were implemented, a significant drop in the amount of calories (7%) and sugar (9%). ) per dollar in consumer purchases.

This occurred through two channels: consumers began to opt for healthier products and companies adjusted their products to avoid being affected by the seals. The deleterious effect was the increase in prices, as healthier products tend to be more expensive to produce.

On the consumers’ side, the main reason for the change was the decrease in purchases of products that they incorrectly judged to be healthy. This is an indication that the provision of information — not just that selected by companies —​ can help consumers in their choices.