Study by the University of Innsbruck: Food with a face is not eaten with pleasure
Industry and marketing like to put faces on products, as numerous studies have shown that humanization has a positive effect on product evaluation and the probability of purchase. A study by the University of Innsbruck published in the “Journal of Consumer Psychology” now shows in surveys and experiments that consumers like to buy humanized foods such as chocolate beans with a face or gingerbread men, but are reluctant to eat them.
Entire marketing and advertising concepts are based on so-called “anthropomorphism”, such as chocolate beans or eggs with human features, chips, croquettes, etc. They are based on numerous studies that prove the sales-promoting effect of humanized products.
When a study was published in 2015 because people not only buy more, but actually eat more biscuits with faces painted on them, marketing expert Roland Schroll from the Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism at the University of Innsbruck found it “strange”. he told the APA. “Because I personally don’t want to bite into something that has a face on it.” For this reason he has started to study the phenomenon more closely.
In several surveys and experiments that Schroll conducted in the USA and Austria, he recorded the reaction of consumers to foods with human traits. He showed that consumers do not like to eat them. “When products are humanized, we attribute human characteristics to them and give them the ability to feel pain,” Schroll said. Eating them seems immoral.
He carried out several studies with humanized and normal apples. For example, test participants reported that they felt less like eating an apple after they had previously seen an advertisement with an apple with facial features. They would also enjoy the apple less then. If other test persons were offered chocolate lenses with and without a face, they tended to choose those without a face.
In another experiment, participants were asked to imagine Christmas shopping, given a choice between a Christmas tree-shaped gingerbread cookie and a human figure. It turned out that people would rather buy the gingerbread man. However, if the test persons were actually presented with the gingerbread in these two shapes, they preferred to reach for the tree.
These effects are primarily seen in people who classified themselves as more “warm-hearted”. On the other hand, those who rated themselves as “cold-hearted” had fewer problems biting food with their faces.
Because the study published in 2015 that sparked Schroll’s interest in these questions was conducted in South Korea, he has shown in additional 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 be more negative, he stressed.
The consequences of the investigation would depend on what you want to achieve, Schroll emphasized: “If I want people to buy a product, then humanizing it can be a positive strategy. But if I’m primarily concerned with increasing my consumption of food, for example, then it’s rather counterproductive.”