Crossmodal correspondences in product packaging. Assessing color-flavor correspondences for potato chips (crisps).

Journal article

Abstract:: We report a study designed to investigate consumers' crossmodal associations between the color of packaging and flavor varieties in crisps (potato chips). This product category was chosen because of the long-established but conflicting color-flavor conventions that exist for the salt and vinegar and cheese and onion flavor varieties in the UK. The use of both implicit and explicit measures of this crossmodal association revealed that consumers responded more slowly, and made more errors, when they had to pair the color and flavor that they implicitly thought of as being "incongruent" with the same response key. Furthermore, clustering consumers by the brand that they normally purchased revealed that the main reason why this pattern of results was observed could be their differing acquaintance with one brand versus another. In addition, when participants tried the two types of crisps from "congruently" and "incongruently" colored packets, some were unable to guess the flavor correctly in the latter case. These strong crossmodal associations did not have a significant effect on participants' hedonic appraisal of the crisps, but did arouse confusion. These results are relevant in terms of RandD, since ascertaining the appropriate color of the packaging across flavor varieties ought normally to help achieve immediate product recognition and consumer satisfaction.

Language:: English
Keywords:: Female

Food

Humans

Solanum tuberosum

Consumer Satisfaction

Middle Aged

Taste

Onions

Young Adult

Color

Cluster Analysis

Cheese

Male

Adolescent

Food Packaging

Adult
Pubs id:: pubs:170142
UUID:: uuid:419c26bf-0453-4df3-8af0-7dae58fd18c8
Local pid:: pubs:170142
Source identifiers:: 170142
Deposit date:: 2012-12-19
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_419c26bf04534df38af07dae58fd18c8

Licence:: Terms and Conditions of Use for Oxford University Research Archive

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