Sciences, 25(supplement 1), Jackson et al. (2010) Use of nutritional supplementation among university recreation users, Recreation Sports

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1 Navigating a Cluttered Marketplace: Athletes Confusion about Supplements Laurence Chalip Department of Kinesiology and Health Education University of Texas at Austin If you have not already done so, drop by your local health food store or supplement retailer. You will find vitamins, minerals, and supplements by the score, most with labels and advertising that make grand claims about their efficacy and their superiority over the competition. Or do a search on the internet. When it comes to nutrition, the internet is the new wild west. There are thousands of products, each claiming to provide unique benefits to athletes. There are also sources closer to home coaches, trainers, and other athletes. Each makes their own pronouncements about nutrition. Then there are the national governing bodies, the United State Olympic Committee (USOC), and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), whose pronouncements are particularly conservative, and often intended to scare athletes by warning of risks from supplements that might be contaminated with banned substances. It is a territory conducive to confusion. And that matters because athletes do use supplements. Surveys show that 85% of elite track and field athletes have taken supplements 1 to support their training and competition, and well over half the recreational 2 and masters 3 athletes have used supplements for similar purposes. So, if athletes are using supplements, where do they get their information? Well, if you ask them, they will typically tell you that they get their information from doctors and trainers. 4 Yet when their knowledge is queried, it is found to be inaccurate, insufficient, or both. 5 It might be concluded, therefore, that athletes are getting poor information from doctors and trainers, that they fail to remember the information they are given, or that they discount the information. Undoubtedly, all three of these are taking place in some cases and to some degree. 1 Maughan, R.J., Depiesse, F., & Geyer, H. (2007) The use of dietary supplements by athletes, Journal of Sports Sciences, 25(supplement 1), Jackson et al. (2010) Use of nutritional supplementation among university recreation users, Recreation Sports Journal, 34, Striegel et al. (2006) The use of nutritional supplements among masters athletes, International Journal of Sports Medicine, 27, ibid.; op. cit. Jackson et al. 5 op. cit. Maughan et al.

2 But there is something far more insidious taking place. Athletes have become a significant market for purveyors of potions, tonics, and elixirs. The reason there are so many supplements for athletes to choose from is that there is lots of money to be made selling to them, whether the products are useful or not. The result is a cluttered and cacophonous marketplace an environment filled with product and competing product, claim and counter-claim. We know a lot about the effects that marketplace clutter and competing claims have on consumers, and none of those effects is beneficial. The fundamental effect is that consumers become confused. 6 This should come as no surprise. In the presence of many choices and contradictory claims about those choices, it is no wonder that consumers become confused. Their confusion can lead to a number of different outcomes. One of the most common is that the consumer simply gives up and decides to purchase nothing. 7 Given the number of athletes who have used supplements, it seems that giving up is not the choice most have made. When they make choices despite being confused, consumers typically employ heuristics that enable them to choose, even if the consequent choice is a poor one. 8 A heuristic is simply a rule of thumb. So, the question becomes, what heuristics do athletes use when choosing a supplement? In order to answer that question, a recent study 9 examined athletes preferences when choosing a post-exercise recovery drink. Post-exercise recovery drinks are a particularly useful product category for studying athletes confusion when choosing supplementation because it has been well-established that protein-carbohydrate drinks support post-exercise recover better than electrolyte replacement drinks or water alone. 10 Thus, it is possible to determine whether athletes are making the best available choice, as well as what heuristics they apply when making a choice. 6 Mitchell, V- W., Walsh, G., & Yamin, M. (2005) Towards a conceptual model of consumer confusion, Advances in Consumer Research, 32, Iyengar, S., & Lepper, M. (2000) When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, Kasper, H., Bloemer, J., & Driessen, P.H. (2010) Coping with confusion, Managing Service Quality, 21, ; Sakellariou et al. (2010) Food allergen labeling and consumer confusion, Allergy, 65, Newland, B.L., Chalip, L., & Ivy, J.L. (in review) Coping with a cluttered marketplace: Athlete choice of products to support training, Journal of Sport Management. 10 Kerksick et al. (2008) International Society of Sports Nutrition stand: Nutrient timing, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 5(17), 1-12.

3 The study obtained current post-exercise drink choices from 254 adult runners and 359 adult triathletes who currently compete in their respective sports. As might be expected in the presence of confusion, the majority of athletes (59.4%) made suboptimal choices, selecting either water or an electrolyte replacement drink over a protein-carbohydrate drink. In other words, despite the scientific evidence favoring a protein-carbohydrate drink for post-exercise recovery, the majority of active adult athletes in both sports chose against it. Consequently, it is of particular interest to determine what influences athletes when they make choices of this kind. The study asked athletes to rate the importance of social and media sources of influence in their choices of products to support their training. Although social influences did not predict drink choice, media influences did. Athletes who chose no drink other than water reported the least media influence, while athletes choosing an electrolyte replacement drink reported the most media influence. This makes sense insomuch as electrolyte replacement drinks have enjoyed more media hype than protein-carbohydrate drinks, and water has enjoyed the least. In other words, although media can inform athletes, it can also sway athletes away from better choices. If that is so, then information about products matters. So, the study then considered five drink attributes that might affect athletes choices: price, the presence or absence of scientific information supporting the product s use, the amount of fat, the quality of taste, and whether it was endorsed by a famous Olympic athlete. Each of these five attributes was modeled using conjoint analysis a method that enabled the researchers to determine the relative contribution of each attribute to each athlete s preference. When performing such studies, it is useful to determine whether distinct preference groups can be identified. Marketers call these groups segments. The study identified six segments, each of which anchored on particular characteristics of the drink when making its choice. Every segment liked scientific evidence in support of the product s use, but for the largest segment (34.4%) scientific evidence was far-and-away the most important product characteristic. The next largest segment (19.9%) was highly cost conscious, and preferred the most inexpensive alternative. Following that was a segment (15.2%) that particularly wanted to avoid fat. One segment (14.4%) was most concerned about the taste of the product. Finally, endorsement by a famous athlete was strongly disliked by a small (9%) segment, but was well liked by another (7.1%). These findings demonstrate that athletes make their choices using an

4 array of different heuristics, and only a minority of athletes relies primarily on scientific evidence. When the effect of the athletes heuristics on drink choice was tested, it was found that those who focus particularly on scientific evidence also choose a protein-carbohydrate drink for post-exercise recovery the optimal choice. This was only a minority of athletes, however, as most athletes used alternative heuristics, perhaps because they feel unqualified to evaluate scientific claims. Indeed, price conscious and taste conscious athletes tended to choose electrolyte replacement drinks. Although this makes intuitive sense, it is not the case that electrolyte replacement drinks are necessarily the cheapest or best tasting alternatives. For example,whole foods (e.g., bagel with peanut butter, chocolate milk) or commercial protein shakes taste good with minimal to no increase in cost relative to an electrolyte replacement drink. A particularly interesting finding in this study was that athletes who distrusted what they heard (particularly from athletes who were endorsing a product) were the most likely to choose no drink other than water, which was the poorest option. It appears that these athletes confusion led them to distrust the marketplace entirely. That is consistent with findings among consumers in general, which show that conflicting or inconsistent messages about products can cause some to distrust the market. 11 It is useful to summarize the key points so far: Most athletes use supplements to support training and competition, and are apparently more likely to do so as they become more elite. The marketplace for supplements is cluttered and cacophonous. Athletes, like other consumers, find marketplace clutter and cacophony to be confusing. Consequently, they employ an array of heuristics, most of which are suboptimal, when choosing a supplement to support their training and competition. Athletes do like scientific evidence in support of their supplement choices, but only a minority of athletes relies primarily on scientific evidence when choosing supplements to support their training and competition, perhaps because they do not feel qualified to evaluate scientific claims. 11 Walsh, G., & Mitchell, V- M. (2010) The effect of consumer confusion on word of mouth, trust, and customer satisfaction, European Journal of Marketing, 44,

5 Athletes who are most influenced by the media are also most likely to choose a suboptimal product, especially if that product has been heavily advertised. Some athletes distrust what they hear in the market, and therefore choose to make no purchase whatsoever. The evidence for confusion among athletes regarding supplementation is grounds for concern. It appears that most are not getting consistent and accurate information that they trust, and are consequently making poor choices. Athletes clearly need counseling and reliable information regarding nutrition and supplementation. If athletes claims that they consult doctors and trainers for information about supplementation 12 are accurate, then it would seem that the information they are getting is either unhelpful or not trusted. Research demonstrates that information sources are deemed credible if they are perceived to be expert, trustworthy, and likable. 13 In sport we have many experts, ranging from scientists to dietitians to physicians to representatives of sport governing bodies. Most work hard to establish their credentials as experts, but few develop the social skills that make them likable or establish the personal histories and relationships that would render them trustworthy. Coaches and trainers, on the other hand, often have relationships of trust with athletes, and may even be liked. They may not, however, be credible as experts when it comes to nutrition. In short, one of the ways our sport systems may be failing athletes when it comes to nutrition and supplementation is that there is no information pathway that is simultaneously recognized by athletes as expert, trustworthy, likable. If we are going to help athletes overcome the confusion currently plaguing them, we need to create such a pathway. 12 Op. cit. Striegel et al.; Op. sit. Jackson et al. 13 Ames, C., Homes, G., & Strutton, D. (2008) Exploring the relationship between celebrity endorser effects and advertising effectiveness, International Journal of Advertising, 27, ; Kelman, H.C., & Hovland, C.I. (1953) Reinstatement of the communicator in delayed measurement of opinion change, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 43, ; Tybout, A. (1978) Relative effectiveness of three behavioral influence strategies as supplements to persuasion in a marketing context, Journal of Marketing Research, 15, Abbott Laboratories The EAS ACADEMY website and its content is owned by Abbott Nutrition, a division of Abbott Laboratories. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of any part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following: 1. you may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non- commercial use only; 2. you may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material. You may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.