Promoting Healthier Drinking Habits: Using Sound to Encourage the Choice for Non-Alcoholic Beers in E-Commerce

Abstract

Important institutions, such as the World Health Organization, recommend reducing alcohol consumption by encouraging healthier drinking habits. This could be achieved, for example, by employing more effective promotion of non-alcoholic beverages. For such purposes, in this study, we assessed the role of experiential beer packaging sounds during the e-commerce experience of a non-alcoholic beer (NAB). Here, we designed two experiments. Experiment 1 evaluated the influence of different experiential beer packaging sounds on consumers’ general emotions and sensory expectations. Experiment 2 assessed how the sounds that evoked more positive results in Experiment 1 would influence emotions and sensory expectations related to a NAB digital image. The obtained results revealed that a beer bottle pouring sound helped suppress some of the negativity that is commonly associated with the experience of a NAB. Based on such findings, brands and organizations interested in more effectively promoting NAB may feel encouraged to involve beer packaging sounds as part of their virtual shopping environments.

Exploring Crossmodal Associations Between Sound and the Chemical Senses: A Systematic Review Including Interactive Visualizations

“…A mere 10% of all experiments used product-intrinsic sounds to measure their influence specifically on food stimulus perception. In most of these studies, sounds of beverage opening, pouring, or effervescence were used as auditory stimuli (Spence and Wang, 2017;Roque et al, 2018;Mitchell et al, 2019;Rodríguez et al, 2021). The sound of mastication was also used to measure perceptions on meals (e.g., crispy/soft, minced-like, fried, simmered foods; Xu and Kerr, 2012;Endo et al, 2016Endo et al, , 2017Jutras et al, 2019).…”

“…In 47% of the studies focusing on expectations, flavor stimuli consisted solely of terms, including taste terms (i.e., sour, sweet, bitter, salty, umami; Knoeferle et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2015Wang et al, , 2021Qi et al, 2020;Rodríguez et al, 2021) and food names (e.g., yogurt, hamburger, sandwich, chips; Motoki et al, 2022). Moreover, one experiment used audio advertisements about cream puff, lemon juice, and black coffee as chemosensory stimuli that attempted to correspond to sweet, sour, and bitter basic tastes, respectively (Motoki et al, 2019).…”

“…Moreover, one experiment used audio advertisements about cream puff, lemon juice, and black coffee as chemosensory stimuli that attempted to correspond to sweet, sour, and bitter basic tastes, respectively (Motoki et al, 2019). In 17% of these studies, visual cues, namely images of food, beverages, or beverage packages, were the stimuli (Velasco et al, 2014a;Roque et al, 2018;Peng-Li et al, 2020;Padulo et al, 2021;Pantoja and Borges, 2021;Rodríguez et al, 2021).…”

Evaluating replicability of ten influential research on sensory marketing

“…This tendency is present in WEIRD and non-WEIRD consumers. Although some studies have attempted to investigate the role of sensory stimuli in consumer behavior in an online setting (e.g., Rodríguez et al, 2021), less is known about how previous influential findings on sensory marketing, mostly obtained from WEIRD consumers in an offline setting, can be generalized to non-WEIRD consumers in an online setting. To fill this gap, we attempted to replicate ten influential studies on sensory marketing in digital environments by recruiting non-WEIRD consumers.…”

Commercializing Sonic Seasoning in Multisensory Offline Experiential Events and Online Tasting Experiences

“…Given that taste-masking occurs between basic tastes (Breslin and Beauchamp, 1997), it might also be interesting in the future to pursue further whether this is also documented crossmodally, though the evidence to date suggests that crossmodal sensory masking is unlikely to occur (see Spence, 2014). That said, there is another interesting multisensory phenomenon whereby the presentation of the appropriate sound can prevent a visual stimulus from disappearing from awareness (e.g., Adam and Noppeney, 2014;Rodríguez et al, 2021;Sheth and Shimojo, 2014). Similarly, the presence of a sweet taste has been shown to do something very similar for the minty flavour of chewing gum (Davidson et al, 1999).…”