The average internet user is bombarded with a stream of online banners on a daily basis. From promotional offers to brand advertisements, these digital displays attempt to capture our attention while navigating websites, tempting us to engage with the advertised content. But what differentiates an effective banner from a forgettable one? How can marketers cut through the noise and leave a lasting impression on their target audience?

If you're a food lover, chances are you've been lured by a mouth-watering package design at least once. But did you know that the shape and color of packaging can also affect your perception of taste? The days where the sole purpose of a product’s packaging was to protect its content are over. As visual creatures, we often base our purchase decisions on the visual appearance of products. That’s why packaging plays a key role in setting product-related expectations. Packaging design can communicate a product's quality, value, and taste, which can influence consumers' purchasing decisions.

But how exactly can packaging design influence our taste expectations of food and beverage products?

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?

Sustainability is become a more important brand asset with the years. Additionally, the majority of consumers have the intention to pay more for environmentally sustainable packaging (Popovic et al., 2020). However, consumers often don’t know what sustainable packaging should look like (Boz et al., 2020). Mostly, consumers categorize packaging in one of three categories: recyclable, re-usable or wasteful.

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.