Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-27-2025
Journal / Book Title
Public Health Nutrition
Abstract
Objective:
To examine how the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) online food benefit ordering could influence WIC benefit redemptions.
Design:
A cross-sectional study. We compare the average redemption rates between online ordering early adopters and non-adopters among WIC customers before and after implementing WIC online ordering. A propensity score-weighted difference-in-difference model was used to estimate the coefficients.
Setting:
The Oklahoma WIC programme and a grocery store chain in Oklahoma.
Participants:
12743 Oklahoma WIC households that had redeemed their food benefits at the grocery store chain in 2020.
Results:
WIC online ordering significantly positively affected redemption rates for eight of the fifteen food categories. For example, the difference-in-difference coefficients (P–values) of these food categories were cheese or tofu (0·077, < 0·01), yogurt (0·092, < 0·01), whole milk (0·082, 0·022), low-fat milk (0·060, < 0·01), eggs (0·049, 0·033), breakfast cereal (0·085, < 0·01) and infant formula (0·073, 0·039). Two food categories with significantly negative difference-in-difference coefficients had relatively lower redemption rates overall: canned fish (Coefficient = –0·209, P < 0·01) and infant cereal (Coefficient = –0·138, P = 0·015). There were no significant changes in the redemption of fruits and vegetables (Coefficient = 0·031, P = 0·121).
Conclusion:
Adopting WIC online ordering was positively associated with benefit redemption rates among most food benefit categories. Our findings provide preliminary but important evidence regarding online food benefit redemption among low-income consumers.
DOI
10.1017/S1368980025100931
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Zhang, Junzhou; Tang, Chuanyi; Park, Kayoung; and Zhang, Qi, "The association between food benefit online ordering and redemptions: evidence from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children" (2025). Department of Marketing Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 261.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/marketing-facpubs/261
Rights
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Published Citation
Zhang, J., Tang, C., Park, K., & Zhang, Q. (2025). The association between food benefit online ordering and redemptions: evidence from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Public Health Nutrition, 28(1), e147. doi:10.1017/S1368980025100931