Aner Tal, Yaniv Gvili, Moty Amar and Brian Wansink
This study aims to examine whether companies’ donations to political parties can impact product experience, specifically taste.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine whether companies’ donations to political parties can impact product experience, specifically taste.
Design/methodology/approach
Research design consists of four studies; three online, one in person. Participants were shown a cookie (Studies 1-3) or cereal (Study 4) and told that the producing company donated to either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party (Studies 1-3) or an unspecified party (Study 4).
Findings
Participants rated food products as less tasty if told they came from a company that donated to a party they object to. These effects were shown to be mediated by moral disgust (Study 3). Effects were restricted to taste and willingness to buy (Study 4), with no effects on other positive product dimensions.
Research limitations/implications
The studies provide a first piece of evidence that political donations by companies can negatively impact product experience. This can translate to purchase decisions through an emotional, rather than calculated, route.
Practical implications
Companies should be careful about making donations some of their consumers may find objectionable. This might impact both purchase and consumption decisions, as well as post-consumption word-of-mouth.
Originality/value
Companies’ political involvement can negatively impact subjective product experience, even though such information has no bearing on product quality. The current findings demonstrate that alterations in subjective product quality may underlie alterations in consumer decision-making because of ideologically tinged information, and reveals moral disgust as the mechanism underlying these effects. In this, it provides a first demonstration that even mild ideological information that is not globally bad or inherently immoral can generate moral disgust, and that such effects depend on consumers’ own attitudes.
Moty Amar, Yaniv Gvili and Aner Tal
This paper aims to offer social marketers an innovative method to promote healthy foods. This method demonstrates the effectiveness of indirect communication in attracting…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer social marketers an innovative method to promote healthy foods. This method demonstrates the effectiveness of indirect communication in attracting consumers to healthy foods. Further, it aims to offer a way to promote food as healthier with no detrimental effects on its perceived appeal, which are a likely side effect of advertising food as healthy.
Design/methodology/approach
Four between-participant lab studies (N = 50, 80, 80, 102) included manipulations of food motion vs stillness and then compared ratings of food freshness, healthiness and appeal using self-report measures.
Findings
Motion increases healthiness evaluation. This increase in healthiness evaluation occurs without reductions in food appeal. These effects are mediated by evaluations of freshness. This occurred across three different food types and two mediums (still images and digital videos).
Research limitations/implications
The paper provides an effective tool for social marketers wishing to encourage healthier eating. Specifically, it helps address two problems: low effectiveness of prevalent, information-based appeals to encourage healthy eating; and reduced evaluations of tastiness that normally occur when consumers are convinced food is healthy.
Social implications
Social marketers can use motion as an effective tool to promote food as healthy. Importantly, this indirect communication avoids the potential pitfall of reduced food appeal. This should help encourage healthier eating. The findings also supports the use of indirect cues as an effective approach to promoting social ends.
Originality/value
Offering a novel, indirect method of enhancing judgments of food healthiness via a simple visual cue. Demonstrating the effect and its underlying mechanism. Providing a way to counter the prevalent “unhealthy = tasty” intuition, a major obstacle to promoting healthy eating. Supporting social marketers’ use of indirect communication to increase the appeal of desirable societal goals. Finally, showing that sensory visual cues can serve as a source of heuristic thinking.
Details
Keywords
Die Frage «Wie weit kann die öffentliche Hand den Fremdenverkehr fördern?» unterstellt bereits die vollzogene Tatsache der staatlichen Förderung des Fremdenverkehrs. Sie scheint…
Abstract
Die Frage «Wie weit kann die öffentliche Hand den Fremdenverkehr fördern?» unterstellt bereits die vollzogene Tatsache der staatlichen Förderung des Fremdenverkehrs. Sie scheint diese hinzunehmen, ja sogar davon auszugehen, dass der Staat den Fremdenverkehr fördern soll, vielleicht sogar muss, wobei es dann, nur noch einen Schritt bis zur Untersuchung und zum Entscheid darüber bedeuten würde, wie weit er iiberhaupt zu gehen imstande ist, um das apodiktisch feststehende Gebot der staatlichen Unterstüzung maximal zu erfüllen.
A future‐oriented study of behaviour and of the effects on the structure of tourism in Nepal of increasing numbers of tourists, using seasonally adjusted criteria.