Background
Food pricing strategies, independently or combined with strategies such as nutrition and price promotion at remote community stores holds promise as a strategy to improve Indigenous health.
Methods
Retailers, nutritionists and others identified using a snowball sample methodology, participated in semi-structured interviews to identify food pricing strategies in remote communities aimed at improving health outcomes. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Relevant documents were sourced or provided by participants. Content analysis was conducted by two authors.
Results
43 participants based in the Northern Territory or Queensland participated from September 2015 to May 2016. Interview and document analysis show that food pricing policy was dominated by subsidies (i.e., price reduction, voucher) or cross-subsidies (i.e., price reduction combined with price increase), often of moderate magnitude and largely on fruit and vegetables, water, diet soft-drinks and soft-drinks. Business practices described indicate that healthier foods often had a lower mark-up than unhealthier foods. Whilst there was some evidence of promotion and other complementary strategies, this is a developing area for remote stores.
Conclusion
Food pricing policies target key products for health improvement (i.e., fruit, vegetables and beverages). The limited range of targeted products, the mostly moderate magnitude of strategies and the lack of use of taxes are notable. Improving health outcomes through pricing strategies is likely to require a broader selection of targeted foods, the deployment of higher subsidies/taxes and the use of well-designed complementary strategies. The feasibility, sustainability and acceptability of such approaches would need to be considered by remote food suppliers.