Arnd Florack
Arnd Florack is a consumer psychologist at the University of Vienna who appears on two of the studies behind this site's article on green packaging. He is the corresponding author of the 2023 systematic review of packaging colour and perceived healthfulness in Foods, written with Katharina Steiner, and the last author of a 2020 study in Psychology & Marketing on package colour saturation, written with Sonja Kunz and Simona Haasova.
Who they are
Florack is listed with the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna, and his email appears as corresponding author on the 2023 review. The repository copy of the 2020 paper lists the same university for all three authors. Beyond these papers, this page holds no biographical detail, and none is guessed.
Key papers
Steiner, K., & Florack, A. (2023). The influence of packaging color on consumer perceptions of healthfulness: A systematic review and theoretical framework. Foods, 12(21), 3911. doi:10.3390/foods12213911.
Kunz, S., Haasova, S., & Florack, A. (2020). Fifty shades of food: The influence of package color saturation on health and taste in consumer judgments. Psychology & Marketing, 37(7), 900-912. doi:10.1002/mar.21317.
Key ideas
The 2020 paper tested whether saturation, the vividness of a colour, works as a cue to healthiness and taste. Across three studies, ratings of healthiness and tastiness were positively correlated. In two studies, grey versions of product pictures weakened that link, though the difference was no longer reliable once the attractiveness of the products was controlled for. In the third, 171 participants rated the same 20 drinks in versions made 25 per cent more and 25 per cent less saturated. The more saturated versions were rated healthier and tastier, and perceived freshness explained the health effect completely and the taste effect partly. The health difference was very small.
That result runs against Mead and Richerson's 2018 finding that vivid packaging was rated less healthful, and the 2023 review, which Florack co-wrote, records the conflict openly: two studies linked higher saturation to less healthy perceptions and one linked it to higher healthiness. The review treats product category as one of several moderators.
The two papers together describe a field in which colour does shape health judgements but the direction depends on what the colour is attached to. See Colour as a Health Cue and the article Does Green Packaging Look Healthier.
Sources
- Kunz, S., Haasova, S., & Florack, A. (2020). Fifty shades of food: The influence of package color saturation on health and taste in consumer judgments. Psychology & Marketing, 37(7), 900-912. doi:10.1002/mar.21317.
- Steiner, K., & Florack, A. (2023). The influence of packaging color on consumer perceptions of healthfulness: A systematic review and theoretical framework. Foods, 12(21), 3911. doi:10.3390/foods12213911. Read in full text on PubMed Central.