January 31/Nashville/The Tennessean -- Consumers appear to buy less junk food if they put away their credit (or debit) card and always pay cash. That is the finding of a Cornell University study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Unhealthy foods -- cookies, potato chips, etc. -- are impulse buys, says study author Manoj Thomas, an assistant marketing professor at Cornell. “The pain of paying in cash can curb impulsive urges to purchase such unhealthy food products,” he writes.