Cake or fruit? Influencing healthy food choice through the interaction of automatic and instructed mental simulation
- PDF / 1,117,026 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 8 Downloads / 142 Views
Cake or fruit? Influencing healthy food choice through the interaction of automatic and instructed mental simulation Hu Xie 1 & Elizabeth A. Minton 2 & Lynn R. Kahle 1
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Promoting healthy food choice is a central issue for public welfare and a continuous challenge for marketers and policy makers. This research examines how marketing communication elements, such as visuals and text, can be used to encourage healthy food choices. Extending previous research in automatic process mental simulation, this research examines whether visual presentations of food items can trigger a different type of automatic mental simulation that is outcome oriented. Results from four studies show that visual presentations of food items in an advertisement can trigger process and outcome automatic mental simulation (AMS) of food consumption, and AMS interacts with an advertisement’s instructed mental simulation (IMS) to influence consumer healthy food choice. Contributing to marketing research in using IMS in advertising to promote product offerings, this research demonstrates that the success of IMS cues varies depending not only on the amount, but more importantly, the type of AMS triggered from visual cues. Keywords Mental simulation . Embodied simulation . Process and outcome . Grounded cognition . Healthy consumption . Visual and text marketing cues
* Hu Xie [email protected] Elizabeth A. Minton [email protected] Lynn R. Kahle [email protected]
1
University of Oregon, 1208 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA
2
University of Wyoming, 1000 E University Ave, Laramie, WY 82071, USA
Mark Lett
Promoting healthy food choice is a central issue for public welfare and a continuous challenge for marketers and policy makers, given that, in the USA alone, over one third of children and over two thirds of adults are overweight or obese (Ogden et al. 2014). Research has examined multiple marketing communication elements to understand consumption behavior and identify means to promote healthy consumption, including nutrition labels (Aydinoğlu and Krishna 2012; Burton et al. 2009; Wansink and Chandon 2006), packaging sizes and subpackages (Wansink 1996; Wansink et al. 2011), and charity logos (Minton and Cornwell 2015). To contribute to this research stream, this paper examines the nuances of one advertising tactic, mental simulation, in creating effective messages, and promoting healthy food choice. Mental simulation is a frequently used marketing tactic to attract attention, encourage engagement, and thus change behaviors. For example, a recent Disney Cruise Line’s advertisement featured the text, BImagine where the majesty of Alaska meets the magic of Disney. Where your family discovers whales in the morning and gold in the afternoon. Hiking on ancient glaciers and spotting wildlife at every turn.… Your Alaskan Experience.^ Research has shown that such text used in advertising can induce simulations of either the process of using a product or outcomes associated with a product
Data Loading...
