An (un) healthy poster: When environmental cues affect consumers’ food choices at vending machines

Stöckli, Sabrina; Stämpfli, Aline; Messner, Claude; Brunner, Thomas A. (2016). An (un) healthy poster: When environmental cues affect consumers’ food choices at vending machines. Appetite, 96(1), pp. 368-374. Elsevier 10.1016/j.appet.2015.09.034

	Text Stöckli, Stämpfli, Messner and Brunner (2016).pdf - Published Version Restricted to registered users only Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (396kB)
Preview	Text Akzeptiertes Manuskript Stoeckli.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND). Download (494kB) | Preview

Environmental cues can affect food decisions. There is growing evidence that environmental cues influence how much one consumes. This article demonstrates that environmental cues can similarly impact the healthiness of consumers’ food choices. Two field studies examined this effect with consumers of vending machine foods who were exposed to different posters. In field study 1, consumers with a health-evoking nature poster compared to a pleasure-evoking fun fair poster or no poster in their visual sight were more likely to opt for healthy snacks. Consumers were also more likely to buy healthy snacks when primed by an activity poster than when exposed to the fun fair poster. In field study 2, this consumer pattern recurred with a poster of skinny Giacometti sculptures. Overall, the results extend the mainly laboratory-based evidence by demonstrating the health-relevant impact of environmental cues on food decisions in the field. Results are discussed in light of priming literature emphasizing the relevance of preexisting associations, mental concepts and goals.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

241 since deposited on 20 Jun 2016
14 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item