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Increasing and maintaining the population’s consumption of healthful food may hinder the global obesity pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test whether it is possible for healthful sub-brands to achieve higher consumer behavioural loyalty than their less healthful counterparts.

The study analysed three years of consumer panel data detailing all purchases from five consumer goods categories for 15,000 UK households. The analysis uses best-practice techniques for measuring behavioural loyalty: double jeopardy, polarisation index, duplication of purchase and user profile comparisons. Each sub-brand’s healthfulness was objectively coded.

Despite the level of healthfulness, all sub-brands have predictable repeat purchase patterns, share customers as expected and have similar user profiles as each other. The size of the customer base, not nutrition content, is, by far, the biggest determinant of loyalty levels.

Consumers do not show higher levels of loyalty to healthful sub-brands, or groups of healthful sub-brands. Nor do they buy less healthful sub-brands less often (as a “treat”). There are also no sub-groups of (health conscious) consumers who would only purchase healthful options.

Sub-brands do not have extraordinarily loyal or disloyal customers because of their healthfulness. Marketers need to focus on growing sub-brands by increasing their customer base, which will then naturally grow consumer loyalty towards them.

This research brings novel evidence-based knowledge to an emerging cross-disciplinary area of health marketing. This is the first study comparing behavioural loyalty and user profiles towards objectively defined healthful/less healthful sub-brands.

This paper aims to strengthen the process of design thinking by aligning it with netnography, specifically auto-netnography, which this paper asserts is particularly suited to the task of studying and enriching the actions of “designerly types” who seek to fashion monetisable businesses.

This paper conducts an auto-netnography with a structure divined from established design thinking theory – that of empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing – to afford an understanding of how a popular health food influencer designs a successful vegan restaurant.

This paper illustrates the empathetic relationship between a long-term audience member and an entrepreneur/designer/marketer. The intimate cultural analysis reveals the nature of their symbiotic entwinement. In a way that few other methods could, the method shows how this sense of reciprocity, deepens over time.

Conducting an auto-netnography is a prolonged and difficult task. Nonetheless, by revealing the rituals, expectations, roles and routines of content creators, designers and followers, this paper illustrates exciting possibilities for the enactment and development of design thinking in the marketing field.

Designerly types such as marketers and content creators should closely study, listen to and interact with consumers by using a similarly staged process that draws equally from design thinking and auto-netnography.

Prior to this study, existing research has not previously linked design thinking with either netnographic or auto-netnographic research.

Using an extended theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model to test how customer loyalty intentions may relate to subjective and descriptive norms, this study further seeks to determine whether consumption characteristics – product enjoyment and importance – moderate norms‐loyalty relationships.

Using a two‐study approach focusing on youth, an Australian study (n=244) first augmented TPB with descriptive norm. A Singapore study (n=415) followed up with how consumption characteristics might moderate norms‐loyalty relationships. With both studies, linear regressions tested the relationships among the variables.

Extending TPB with descriptive norm improved TPB's predictive ability across studies. Further, product enjoyment and importance moderated the norms‐loyalty relationships differently. Subjective norm related to loyalty intentions significantly with high enjoyment, whereas descriptive norm was significant with low enjoyment. Only subjective norm was significant with low importance.

Single‐item variables, self‐reported questionnaires on intended rather than actual behaviour, and not controlling for cultural differences between the two samples limit generalisablity.

The significance of both norms suggests that mobile firms should reach youth through their peers. With youth social pressure may be influential, particularly with hedonic products. However, the different moderations of product enjoyment and importance imply that a blanket marketing strategy targeting youth may not work.

The study extends academic knowledge on the relationships between norms and customer loyalty, particularly with consumption characteristics as moderators. The findings highlight the importance of considering different norms with consumer behaviour. The study should help mobile firms understand how social influences impact customer loyalty.