The spell of cuteness in food consumption? It depends on food type and consumption motivation

Lee, Hsiao-Ching; Chang, Chun‐Tuan; Chen, Yu-Hsuan; Huang, Yu-Shian

doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2017.11.002

Cited by 21 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Prior studies associate food with hedonic consumption (e.g. Bagchi and Block, 2011; Crolic and Janiszewski, 2016; Lee et al , 2018), and this activity is typically stimulated by the motivation for mood enhancement and self-indulgence (Atalay and Meloy, 2011; Crolic and Janiszewski, 2016; Khare and Chowdhury, 2015; Salerno et al , 2014). As most food photos posted on Instagram are positioned to satisfy consumer hedonic needs (Dhir et al , 2018; Phua, Jin and Kim, 2017), the result of the present study supports findings from Kim, Lee and Chung (2017) suggesting that consumer responses to photos are related more strongly to pleasantness and cognitive stimulation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endorsement and visual complexity in food advertising on Instagram

Kusumasondjaja

Tjiptono

2019

INTR

120

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences in consumer pleasure, arousal and purchase intention when consumers encounter food advertising on Instagram using different endorsers and visual complexity levels. Design/methodology/approach An experimental design was conducted involving 180 undergraduate students from several universities in Surabaya, Indonesia. The participants had actively used Instagram for at least one year. Findings Food ads endorsed by a celebrity generate more pleasure and arousal than those endorsed by food experts. Food advertising using high levels of visual complexity cues generates more pleasure and arousal than less complex advertising. However, less complex food ads using food experts create greater pleasure than those endorsed by celebrities. Consumer pleasure and arousal were significant mediators of the impact of endorser type and visual complexity on consumer purchase intentions. Practical implications As celebrities and higher levels of visual complexity result in more favorable responses to Instagram ads, food marketers need to consider increasing visual complexity when using celebrities in advertising by adding more objects, using more colors, objects, or textures and incorporating asymmetric elements in the advertisements. Originality/value This is one of the few studies comparing the effectiveness of celebrity and expert endorsers in Instagram advertising. Also, this research extends the existing knowledge about visual complexity in the context of social media advertising.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endorsement and visual complexity in food advertising on Instagram

Kusumasondjaja

Tjiptono

2019

INTR

120

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, studies in Japan have investigated different implications of the Japanese word “kawaii” and the English word “cute” (Nittono, 2016), and compared the psychophysiological responses of individuals toward kawaii photos with and without baby schemata (Nittono & Ihara, 2017). Studies in Taiwan have focused on the formation of cute elements, the effect of cute elements on consumers, and cute self‐presentation (e.g., Chang, 2009; Lee, Chang, et al, 2018).…”

Section: Conceptual Background and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The healing effect of cute elements

Chou

Chu

Chen

2021

Journal of Consumer Affairs

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Consumers around the world use retail therapy to alleviate negative emotions. In response, marketers have incorporated cute elements into product design, capitalizing on the demand for products that provide healing effects. Grounded on attention restoration theory, this study explores how baby and whimsical cuteness generate feelings of healing. It also clarifies the moderating effect of product type and examines whether feelings of healing affect consumer subjective well‐being, product attitudes, and purchase intentions. The results indicate that products with cute elements generate stronger feelings of healing. Baby cuteness is relatively more effective than whimsical cuteness. Cuteness arouses feelings of healing through the mechanisms of fascination and extent. Incorporating cute elements with utilitarian (vs. hedonic) products enhances these healing effects. Feelings of healing mediate the cuteness effect on well‐being and attitudinal responses. These findings are valuable to marketing theory and practice and consumer well‐being.

show abstract

“…Cuteness is an emerging field of research and has been attracting attention in various areas, such as psychology (Sherman and Haidt, 2011;Nittono, 2016), neuroscience (Kringelbach et al, 2016), humanities (Dale et al, 2017;May, 2019), marketing (Nenkov and Scott, 2014), and engineering (Marcus et al, 2017). The objects of cuteness include babies and animals (Little, 2012;Borgi and Cirulli, 2016), industrial designs (Miesler et al, 2011), robots (Caudwell et al, 2019), and foods (Lee et al, 2018). In English, cuteness is regarded as "infant physical attractiveness" (Karraker and Stern, 1990), which is a trait of an object and something to be perceived.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creation and Validation of the Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF) Dataset

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research interest in cuteness perception and its effects on subsequent behavior and physiological responses has recently been increasing. The purpose of the present study was to produce a dataset of Japanese infant faces that are free of portrait rights and can be used for cuteness research. A total of 80 original facial images of 6-month-old infants were collected from their parents. The cuteness level of each picture was rated on a 7-point scale by 200 Japanese people (100 men and 100 women in their 20s–60s). Prototypical high- and low-cuteness faces were created by averaging the top 10 and bottom 10 faces according to the mean cuteness ratings. Then, 50 composite faces were made by mixing two faces randomly chosen from the 60 unused middle-cuteness faces. The normative cuteness ratings of these composite faces were obtained from 229 Japanese men and women in their 20s–60s. The shape of each composite face was transformed to be cuter (+50%) or less cute (–50%) along a continuum between the high- and low-cuteness prototypical faces. A two-alternative forced-choice task (N = 587) confirmed that cuteness discrimination was better than the chance level for all 50 face pairs. Moreover, the results showed that young men had poorer sensitivity to cuteness differences in infant faces than older men and women of any age. This Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF, “jay-sif”) dataset, including composite face images and normative rating scores, is publicly available online.

show abstract

The spell of cuteness in food consumption? It depends on food type and consumption motivation

Cited by 21 publications

References 29 publications

Endorsement and visual complexity in food advertising on Instagram

Endorsement and visual complexity in food advertising on Instagram

The healing effect of cute elements

Creation and Validation of the Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF) Dataset

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About