Within the framework of a programme supported by the ANR, Normandy’s IAEs’ shared laboratory is currently endeavouring to establish a link between advertising, eating habits and childhood obesity.

Three priority research themes | Essential business links

Three priority research themes
The NIMEC – Normandy Innovation Market Enterprise Consumption – was born in 2008, from the fusion between the CIME (Caen Innovation Market Enterprise), the Caen IAE management research centre, and its Rouen-based counterpart, the CREGO (Research and Study Centre on Organisational Management). Today, it reunites no less than 47 lecturer-researchers, professors and lecturers, together with 75 PhD students. Over and above marketing (distribution and consumption for the 0-25 age group), “strategy” (innovation and the links between strategy and territory) is also one of the laboratory’s key research themes. Consequently, the NIMEC works in close collaboration with the TES Cluster, along with companies such as NXP or France Telecom, on projects dealing with the use of electronic cards. “A third research theme is progressively emerging, focusing on human resource management,” adds Joël Brée.

Essential business links
“Our relationships with businesses are essential, for they offer constant food for thought, hence enhancing our study efforts” highlights Joel Brée. However, the laboratory’s director admits that many of them still require to be “educated”, “for they often confuse management studies with management research.” Although more difficult to tackle from the business’s point of view, since often conducted over long periods, welcoming research programmes remains possible and a current thesis on recreational shopping among adolescents, conducted in partnership with the retail chain Pimkie, is a prime example. “Businesses that successfully grasp and develop this research culture can take advantage of it to manage their own fundamental issues.”

So does publicity rhyme with obesity? For the last year, the NIMEC (Normandy Innovation Market Enterprise Consumption) has been contemplating precisely that question.
Caen and Rouen Universities’ IAE (Business Administration Institute) management research centre (see boxed article) was already specialised in marketing, focusing in particular on the 0-25 year age group. In January 2008, it became the initiating laboratory of a three year programme entitled “Marketing and childhood obesity”, supported by the ANR (French National Research Agency). To conduct this project, the aim of which is to determine the existence of a link between advertising and eating habits in children and adolescents, the NIMEC is working in particular with the University of Paris I’s Management Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Hub (PRISM) along with American, Belgian and Tunisian research teams, in order to develop a tool to measure product “desirability”. “Other teams are also working on the nutrition-pleasure association, or on the influence of communication between children themselves,” explains Joël Brée, UCBN Professor and director of the NIMEC. “

Advertising culture” through the looking-glass

Three IAE PhD students are also involved in the programme (1). Claire Masserot is one of them.

As the subject of her thesis, she has chosen the influence of television advertising on children’s food-related choices. “It is a totally experimental method,” she explains. For the first phase of research, advertising messages are broadcast to children, first of all for healthy products (fruit, vegetables), then for intermediate products (cereals, fruit juices) and, finally, for sweet or fatty products (chocolate, fizzy drinks). “The children then complete a questionnaire, which is processed by quantitative data analysis software.” The second phase of the experiment, scheduled for the forthcoming university year, will consist in assessing the effect of execution-related elements, in other words how the product is portrayed – via advertisements… The first results are expected late 2010. (1) The first thesis conducted within the framework of this research programme is due to be presented next July: “The dissemination of eating habits and preferences within the family circle”. Caption NIMEC has, since 2007, been the initiator and coordinator of a research programme entitled “Marketing and childhood obesity”. Claire Masserot, a PhD student at the IAE, is preparing her thesis on the influence of advertising on children’s food-related choices, with help and support from Joël Brée, director of the NIMEC.

Joël Brée
Director of the NIMEC
Tél. : 02 31 56 65 00
Site : NIMEC

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