Package color saturation and food healthfulness perceptions
Mead and Richerson report four experiments in which consumers rated foods in vivid, highly saturated packaging as less healthful than foods in muted packaging. Conceptual fluency mediates the effect, because shoppers meet unhealthy foods in saturated packaging often. Subjective nutrition knowledge weakens the effect and restrained eating strengthens it. The authors present the work as extending the colour literature on how distinct colour elements affect consumer perceptions and as adding a heuristic to the food well-being literature.
Mead and Richerson report four experiments in which consumers rated foods in vivid, highly saturated packaging as less healthful than foods in muted packaging. Conceptual fluency mediates the effect, because shoppers meet unhealthy foods in saturated packaging often. Subjective nutrition knowledge weakens the effect and restrained eating strengthens it. The authors present the work as extending the colour literature on how distinct colour elements affect consumer perceptions and as adding a heuristic to the food well-being literature.
Written from the abstract, as recorded by IDEAS/RePEc.
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Mead, J. A., & Richerson, R. (2018). Package color saturation and food healthfulness perceptions. Journal of Business Research, 82, 10-18. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.08.015