Food with face is not eaten with pleasure

24-Aug-2022 - Austria

Industry and marketing like to put faces on products, as numerous studies show that humanization has a positive effect on product evaluation and purchase probability. However, a study in the "Journal of Consumer Psychology" by Roland Schroll now shows in several surveys and experiments that consumers like to buy humanized foods such as chocolate lentils with faces or gingerbread men, but eat them only reluctantly.

Entire marketing and advertising concepts are based on what is known as "anthropomorphism," such as chocolate lentils or eggs, chips, croquettes, etc. with human features. They are based on numerous studies that prove the sales-promoting effect of anthropomorphized products. So when a study appeared in 2015 showing that people not only buy more, but actually eat more cookies with faces painted on them, marketing expert Roland Schroll of the Institute for Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism found it "strange," as he told APA. "Because I personally don't want to bite into something that has a face on it." For that reason, he has begun to study the phenomenon more closely.

Immoral because of possible pain sensation

In several surveys and experiments Schroll conducted in the U.S. and Austria, he recorded consumers' reactions to foods with human features. In the process, he showed that consumers don't like to eat them as much. "When products are humanized, we attribute human characteristics to them and give them the ability to feel pain," Schroll said. Eating them thus appears immoral.

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He conducted several studies with humanized and normal apples. For example, test participants reported that they had less desire to eat an apple after they had previously seen advertisements featuring an apple with facial features. They would also then enjoy the apple less. If other test subjects were offered chocolate lentils with and without a face on them, they were more likely to reach for those without a face.

In another experiment, the test participants were asked to imagine a Christmas shopping trip in which they had to choose between a gingerbread in the shape of a fir tree and a human figure. This showed that people were more likely to buy the gingerbread man. However, when the subjects were actually presented with the gingerbread in these two shapes, they preferred to reach for the tree.

Especially "warm-hearted" people have scruples

These effects were primarily seen in people who classified themselves as "warm-hearted". Those who rated themselves as "cold-hearted," on the other hand, had fewer problems biting into foods with a face.

Because the study published in 2015 that sparked Schroll's interest in these questions was conducted in South Korea, he has shown in further experiments that are not part of the current publication that the phenomenon is also dependent on culture. In Asian cultures, humanization would have a positive effect on consumption; in the West, it would have a negative effect, he pointed out.

The consequences of the research would depend on what one wanted to achieve, Schroll stressed: "If I want people to buy a product, then humanizing it can be a positive strategy. But if my main goal is to increase consumption of, say, healthy foods, then it tends to be counterproductive."

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.