How do food companies try to reach lower-income consumers, and do they succeed? Insights from a systematic review

Lower-income populations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) often face challenges accessing affordable, desirable, safe, and nutritious food, contributing to poor diet quality and malnutrition. As the main source of food for most of this population, private-sector firms could play a role in alleviating this. However, little is known about specific approaches they use to do so, or their effectiveness. This paper thus identifies approaches food companies use to attempt to reach lower-income consumers with food and beverage products in LMICs. This is done through a systematic review of research as well as a scoping review of real-world companies. After reviewing over 8000 titles, 74 documents were deemed eligible for inclusion, and 99 relevant example companies were identified. Analyzing these, the review synthesized the approaches into 13 specific business model features. In general, all were used by both small- and medium-sized enterprises and large firms and for highly nutritious as well as less nutritious foods. However, there was a considerable deficit of high-quality evidence of reaching lower-income consumers or improving diet quality, and more research on this topic is needed. Moreover, challenges with marketing nutritious foods likely mean these models are applied more often to less nutritious foods.