Contextual effects on food consumption: The influence of tableware aesthetics and package colour

Research in food consumption has emphasised the importance of the contextual factors such as advertising, emotions, portion size, and restaurant ambience in influencing food decisions. Seemingly small shifts in the contextual environment can significantly influence perceptions and behaviour, making consumers more vulnerable to food consumption context than they realise. Due to their proximity to the food and direct interaction with the buying and eating experience, both product packaging and tableware can exert powerful influence on consumers’ food decision. Given the potentially important role of tableware and packaging design, this thesis aims to extend the food consumption literature by examining the influence of these factors on food perception, buying intention, and amount consumed, as well as the mediators and moderators of these relationships. Across two essays with ten studies in different settings (online panels, lab and field experiment), using different subject populations (students, non-students), and focusing on different outcome variables (perceptions, buying intention, and amount consumed), this thesis examines the role of contextual cues in food consumption. The first essay examines the effect of tableware aesthetics on actual food consumption and finds that while aesthetically pleasing (versus plain) tableware increases the amount of hedonic food consumed among males, it triggers monitoring among females which leads to reduced consumption. The second essay identifies dark versus bright package colour as a contextual cue that influences individuals’ perception such that dark is perceived as tastier and bright is perceived as healthier. Further, consumers perceive higher level of congruency with hedonic food in dark package and healthy food in bright package, which leads to greater intention to buy. Overall, this thesis provides strong empirical evidence to support the premise that contextual factors can significantly influence perceptions and decision making, which has significant implications for researchers, consumers, as well as practitioners. These implications are also developed and discussed in detail in the thesis