Capturing Marketing and Policy Practices of Online Food Retailers: A Codebook

This codebook was developed to assess the online food retail environment. Codebook items were selected in alignment with a conceptual framework from previous research describing the influence of the online food retail environment on consumer behavior, and included four domains: (1) retailer policies and practices; (2) food marketing; (3) website customization; and (4) equity and transparency. Some components captured across these domains include fees for use of the service, accepted forms of payment, delivery infrastructure (e.g., number of delivery windows offered), food and beverage marketing on home, search, and product pages, availability of nutrition information and assistance from the retailers, and disclosure of privacy policies. This codebook is intended to be used alongside a "real-world shopping experience" to capture all components and features of the online food retail environment. This codebook has been used to capture the policies and practices of 21 online grocery retailers, including the 20 top revenue generating grocers in the United States and the eight originally authorized retailers of the USDA's SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot (work currently under peer-review). The authors would also like to acknowledge the Healthy Food Retail Working Group – a group of researchers with expertise in healthy food retail convened by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network (https://nopren.org/working_groups/healthy-food-retail/) - for their helpful review and feedback in the development of this coding protocol and the coding instrument.