Abstract:
In developed countries, obesity has become a distressing social problem that should be dealt with. A possible approach for this growing epidemic is to improve the image of healthy food through and in advertisements. Therefore, it is relevant to examine to what extent there is an effect of different types of language and visual cues on the attitude towards healthy foods in advertisements (RQ). Particularly, the objective was to discern if nutritional and indulgent labelling and the presence of a visual cue could improve the attitude in terms of persuasiveness, desirability and credibility towards healthy food in advertisements. To examine this question an online experiment was performed where participants were subjected to six different healthy food advertisements that involved either a basic, nutritional and indulgent type of food labelling and the presence of a visual cue in the form of a hand with cutlery or not. These stimuli were followed up by a survey about the desirability, persuasiveness and credibility of the product/advertisement. Results indicated that there was no significant effect of the language description and visual cue on the desirability, persuasiveness and credibility, except for the basic language description being more credible than its nutritional counterpart. Thus, we are unable to conclude that the involved types of language and the visual cue can improve the persuasiveness, desirability and credibility and as a consequence the attitude towards healthy food in advertisements. Despite this conclusion, we found the basic language advertisements to be more credible than their nutritional equivalents. This is probably due to the basic language advertisements being considered as more natural and common than the nutritional equivalents due to the mere-exposure effect. In summary, there was no significant evidence to assume that language descriptions and visual cues can be helpful in improving the attitude towards healthy food consumption.
