Abstract:
In marketing communication, packaging can play a vital role by attracting a consumer’s attention and by conveying a message about the product it contains. All its external sensory features such as shape, weight, and color help consumers with making assumptions about the product and its taste. When these features are congruent with the taste of the product, a crossmodal correspondence is brought into play. The heuristic of brand awareness is also often applied by consumers when buying products. A brand’s name is seen as an important quality cue, and consumers favor products they are familiar with. No research to date has studied both the influence of brand familiarity and taste-shape correspondences on taste perception. Therefore the present study asked the following research question: “What is the influence of packaging shape on perceived taste for familiar and unfamiliar brands?”
