Healthy Advertising Coming to Its Senses: The Effectiveness of Sensory Appeals in Healthy Food Advertising

Abstract

With increasing obesity rates and the daily overload of unhealthy food appeals, an important objective for advertising today is to promote healthy food consumption. According to previous research, sensory food advertisements referring to multiple senses-a combination of visual (sight), tactile (touch) and olfactory (smell) cues-evoke more positive sensory thoughts and, therefore, higher taste perceptions than advertisements referring to a single sense (e.g., only taste cues). However, this research only focused on sensory advertising for unhealthy food. The current research investigates how sensory advertising can promote healthy food. While multiple-sense ads for unhealthy food were shown to be more effective than single-sense ads, we find that, for healthy food, single-sense ads increase taste perceptions and advertising effectiveness compared to multiple-sense ads. In two laboratory experiments, we show a different underlying process for this effect-that is, single-sense ads evoke fewer negative thoughts than multiple-sense ads, which mediates the effect of single-sense versus multiple-sense ads on taste perceptions and advertising effectiveness. Moreover, we show that these effects occur not only for verbal ads but, importantly, also for visual ads, which are omnipresent today. This article closes with implications for theory and suggestions for food marketers, ad executives, and public policy.Foods 2020, 9, 51 2 of 22 especially those at risk of obesity [10,11]. It is, therefore, crucial to upgrade the image of healthy food in the minds of consumers to further attempt to counter the obesity epidemic. Research on the motivational processes underlying the conflict between healthiness and taste is still scarce [5]. A common assumption in existing food research is that consumers want to make healthy food choices, but, in reality, many consumers rather consider taste than the prospective health benefits of the food [12]. As such, a potential effective means to promote healthy food is using food advertising that appeals to consumers and enhances their taste perceptions of healthy food.Recent research on advertising effectiveness has focused on sensory marketing as an efficient way to engage consumers [13][14][15][16]. Sensory marketing engages the consumers' senses and affects their perception, judgment and behavior [15]. Applied to food, sensory food advertisements are used to create sensory triggers that affect the perceived quality of an abstract food attribute like its taste, smell, or shape [15]. According to Elder and Krishna [17], multisensory advertising for food can enhance taste perceptions of the food. These authors argue that ads referring to multiple senses (multiple-sense ads) for indulgent foods evoke more positive sensory thoughts about the food (e.g., "I like the crunchy texture of potato chips") compared to ads mentioning taste only (single-sense ads), and hence these positive sensory thoughts optimize perceived taste of the food.However, this previous research only investigated the effects of se...

Food on the Move: The Impact of Implied Motion in Pictures on Food Perceptions through Anticipated Pleasure of Consumption

“…Further, we contribute to advertising research on healthy food promotion, by investigating a commonly used visual cue to display food. Previous research has shown that visual elements in food pictures can affect consumers’ responses to healthy and unhealthy food differently [ 6 , 34 ]. However, we find that implied motion does not impact consumer perceptions of healthy and unhealthy food products differently.…”

“…For example, when food pictures are shot from a top perspective (vs. a diner’s eye perspective), consumers choose less unhealthy food [ 6 ]. On the other hand, promoting healthy food in sensory advertising is found to be the most effective by visually presenting single-sense (vs. multiple-sense) elements [ 34 ].…”

Pleasure or Health? The Role of Mental Simulation in Desire and Food Choices

“…However, products perceived as healthy (virtue) do not benefit from the same promotion strategies as more tempting products (vice). In fact, a recent study showed that evoking a multisensory experience of the food (e.g., taste, smell, enjoyment), a wide strategy used to promote vice foods [19] compared to a single-sense ad slogan (mentioning taste only), resulted in more negative thoughts when a healthy food (cherry tomatoes) was used [20]. Understanding how these simulations operate, also with virtue foods, is relevant to promote healthier choices at an individual level but it also contributes to a better understanding of how these foods behave in people's minds, which could help companies to adapt their promotion strategies according to their product categories.…”

Choice Hygiene for “Consumer Neuroscientists”? Ethical Considerations and Proposals for Future Endeavours

“…Vision . In the food industry, it is commonly suggested that, for unhealthy foods, ads stimulating multisensory channels “work best” ( Elder and Krishna, 2010 ), while single-sense ads are successful to advertise healthy foods ( Roose and Mulier, 2020 ), and that manipulation of the visual field (e.g., background/packaging/colour, dark/pale) can lead to differences in expected flavour and boost sales indirectly ( Carvalho et al, 2017 ; Spence, 2019 ). Colour, shape, size, and shining transparency, reflections, and special textures can play a role in costumers’ decision-making processes ( Manenti, 2013 ).…”