Tasting in 2D: implications of food shape, visual cues, and oral haptic sensory inputs

Courtney Szocs () and Dipayan Biswas ()
Additional contact information
Courtney Szocs: Portland State University
Dipayan Biswas: University of South Florida

Marketing Letters, 2016, vol. 27, issue 4, No 12, 753-764

Abstract: Abstract Marketers often vary the shape and dimensions of food products. But could changing the shape (e.g., molding food into cubes or rectangular prisms) or altering the dimensions (e.g., cutting food into thicker or thinner pieces) have unintended consequences in terms of influencing consumers’ size perceptions, calorie estimates, or desired consumption volume of the food? Research related to visual inputs and the elongation bias would suggest that thicker and cube-shaped foods would be perceived as larger and higher in calories; however, research related to oral haptic sensory inputs (i.e., the way the food feels in the mouth) would suggest that thinner and rectangular shaped foods would be perceived as larger and higher in calories. We test these competing predictions in a series of three experimental studies and find support for the oral haptic-based hypothesis. Conceptual and managerial implications are discussed.

Keywords: Oral haptics; Food; Visual; Sensory marketing; Size perception (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11002-015-9378-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:mktlet:v:27:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s11002-015-9378-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... etailsPage=societies

DOI: 10.1007/s11002-015-9378-6

Access Statistics for this article

Marketing Letters is currently edited by Joel Steckel and Peter Golder

More articles in Marketing Letters from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().