Taste is taste, isn't it? Well, not quite! What if I told you that the color, shape, and packaging of a product can significantly alter the way we perceive its flavor? 

Imagine this: a vibrant, red soda can with a sleek, modern design. Your taste buds anticipate a bold and exciting, perhaps cherry-flavored experience. Now, picture that same drink in a plain, unadorned can. Suddenly, your expectations shift, and the taste seems more muted, subtle, or even unexpected. In this blog, we will uncover the secrets of how our senses collaborate with design, presentation, and surroundings to shape the way we taste things. Get ready to discover how the look and feel of a product can play a tantalizing role in the delightful dance of flavors on your palate.

Shoppers increasingly consider the naturalness of products. Typically, natural products are preferred in categories in which naturalness is considered important. But what does naturalness have to do with the package of the product? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Let’s look at the images below. Which of the products do you consider to be most natural?

Supermarkets display packaged and unpackaged versions of products across a number of categories in-store and online. Restaurants also display products with and without packaging. Starbucks, for example, instructs its employees to remove bakery items from their individual packages before placing them unpackaged in a display case, only to re-package them for the customer upon purchase. The question is: what effect does this have on consumer preference, and purchase likelihood?

In this blog, we will discuss how packaging food has an effect on perceived naturalness  (i.e., originating from plants, animals, or humans) and thereby on purchase intentions. Let’s dive in…

Imagine you are walking through the city center on a cold winter day. You come across an ad displaying the perfect hot chocolate and you start craving some warmth. One minute later, you find yourself standing in line to grab one.

It is not very surprising that hot chocolate ads work better during winter time than summer time. But did you know that you can boost your ad by adjusting it to the surrounding temperature for almost any product?

Rationally speaking, forms wouldn’t have a taste. A circle is a circle and that’s that. Or isn’t it quite that simple?

Although shape and taste are two different sensory experiences, shape does influence taste. Researchers have found that we as humans associate taste qualities with different design features such as curvature, texture, orientation, symmetry, and so on. In fact, the shape of everything, from the product itself to the typeface in which it is presented and the shapes of/on product packaging have all been shown to influence people’s expectations, and sometimes even their experiences.

In this blog we will take a closer look at how shape influences taste and how you could use that knowledge to increase the attractiveness of your product.

Just some quick fun facts. Companies spend millions of dollars to discover the perfect amount of fizz in a soda. Eating chips with headphones on makes the experience less enjoyable. And the louder the sound of a shutting car door is, the safer a consumer feels - which is why car manufacturers see this as a feature instead of a bug. 

What do these phenomena have in common? They highlight the importance that sound has in consumer perception. But did you know that something as subtle as the sound of background music can affect your purchase decisions drastically?

Today we will talk about how background music affects consumer behavior. Because even when you are not consciously listening to the music being played, it can still affect your buying decisions. And not just a bit, but quite dramatically! 

Let’s look at some of the most interesting insights on how you can put music to work for you as a company.

We’ve probably all been there; for months, you’ve been looking forward to watch a new movie that just came out. When you’re about to see the movie, though, your friend who just saw it tells you how it ends. Well, when that happens to me, I tend to get angry because I assume the movie will not be as fun anymore. Sounds logical right? If you already know the outcome, then why still watch the movie?

We might assume that it is because of this reason that the publishers of the movie ‘Avengers: Endgame’ communicated the following warning to fans upon the release of their movie: “When you see Endgame in the coming weeks, please don’t spoil it for others, the same way you wouldn’t want it spoiled to you” (Kooser, 2019).