New marketing strategies for behavioral change in obesity (R-3464)

Obesity has become an important problem in Flanders. It causes several health problems and has a high financial cost. Marketing techniques can be of aid to tackle this problem. By sending text messages to overweight and obese people it is studied whether these test messages can help in prevention (overweight people) and intervention (obese people) for obesity. The content of the text messages is partly tailored, based on their results on the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire. The effect of different frequencies of text messages will be studied (e.g., weight evolution, attitude changes,...).

Keywords:obesity, overweight, social marketing, text messages (SMS)

Disciplines:Economics and business