Hello my nerdy friends,
When advertising food, like cookies or donuts, it's really common to depict them with a bite taken out of them.
But does this increase sales or is it better to show the full product?
Let's find out.
The research:
Researchers ran two online experiments.
People looked at pictures of food shown with a bite or without one.
Sometimes the picture appeared by itself, and sometimes it was part of an ad with a logo and slogan.
Then people rated how much they liked the product, how likely they’d be to buy it, and how much they’d pay for it (Meersseman et al., 2021).
🧪What they found:
When the picture stood alone, the bitten food made people want it less.
They liked it less, and they said they’d pay less.
But when that same picture appeared inside an ad, the bite didn’t affect purchase intentions.
Why?
Our brains treat food pictures almost like real food.
When we see a bite, it sends a clear signal that someone else already touched or ate it. That triggers disgust, a feeling that evolved to keep us away from things that might be unsafe.
This is called a consumer contamination effect. Even though we know it’s just a photo, our brains still get the “ick“.
But when the photo looks like a real ad(with design, text, or a logo), our brains know it’s just a symbol and that context switch turns off the “ick”.
Takeaway
Keep the food whole or cut cleanly in packaging, product pages, menus, and social posts that only show the food itself.
See you next week,
Ksenia, the chief nerd
P.S. Thank you to today’s sponsor, Neurons.
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