Augmented grocery shopping: fostering healthier food purchases through AR

Food choices are intimately related to individual health. Therefore, the food we buy should be carefully chosen. However, grocery shopping is typically done in noisy environments, and food products usually present cluttered labels with dense texts that make it hard to properly evaluate relevant nutritional data. Augmented reality (AR) allows a shopper to visualize digitally generated contents onto real objects and to interact with them. In this experiment, we investigated the effects of delivering nutritional information using AR technology on food choices. To this end, we ran a between-participants laboratory experiment in which participants were asked to choose among the products available. The experimental group received the food-related information via AR, while the control group had ordinary access to food packaging. We found that AR technology facilitated the choice of healthier food items. Additionally, participants in the experimental group reported that they based their decisions on nutritional information rather than on the appearance of the package. The present work highlights how AR can be exploited to bring to the foreground information that would otherwise be hard to spot, thereby increasing the consumer’s awareness of the overall characteristics of the product.