How tasty is governance? Understanding the effect of a “cooperative” label on perceived taste of food products

Abstract

This research investigates whether a label on cooperative governance influences the perceived taste of a product through a sensation transfer process. The first study measures perceived taste of unbranded products implicitly (via an Implicit Association Test) and explicitly (via a survey). The label improves the implicitly and explicitly perceived taste. The second study, reproducing the same protocols with branded products, confirms this result for implicitly perceived taste, but the effect of the label on explicitly perceived taste disappears. Because implicit measures are more predictive of routine purchasing than are explicit measures, we recommend spotlighting cooperative governance on food products.