Too Cute to Be Healthy: How Cute Packaging Designs Affect Judgments of Product Tastiness and Healthiness

We show that cute packaging designs increase perceptions of product tastiness and, at the same time, decrease perceptions of product healthiness

Benedikt Schnurr

2019

Scholarcy highlights

  • In the packaged food market, several brands use cute packaging designs, for example, by displaying playful colors or funny cartoon-like pictures
  • We show that cute packaging designs increase perceptions of product tastiness and, at the same time, decrease perceptions of product healthiness
  • As perceptions of both tastiness and healthiness jointly determine purchase intention, we further examine the role of the product type in order to demonstrate how marketers may benefit from using cute packaging designs
  • We find that cute packaging designs increase consumer purchase intention for relative vice products but decrease consumer purchase intention for relative virtue products
  • Caleb Warren and Martin Reimann Crazy-Funny-Cool Theory: Divergent Reactions to Unusual Product Designs, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 4, no.44: 409–421

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