This video by Peter Ubel has an excellent discussion about the issue of consumer irrationality in the context of obesity and discusses some interventions that work and some that don’t, drawing on recent developments in behavioural economics. Ubel’s perspective is particularly interesting as he is a marketing professor in Duke University’s Fuqua Business School and is also a physician.
I was particularly interested in his discussion of “fat taxes” where he reports an experimental finding that such taxes are effective only when the taxes are explicitly labelled so the consumer sees that they are paying the tax and why.
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