FOOD
PSYCHOLOGY
Creatively named menu items sell better,
researchers show
Mark
Reutter, Business Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@illinois.edu
7/1/02
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Mark
Twain warned against overwrought descriptions, but then again Twain wasn’t
in the business of selling food.
"Succulent," "legendary," "hearty-wholesome" and
other words that evoke favorable associations with food will boost restaurant
sales by 27 percent, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
have found.
Brian Wansink, an Illinois marketing professor, and James Painter, manager of
the Quantity Foods Laboratory, compared the reaction of 140 customers who regularly
ate lunches at a university cafeteria.
Over a period of six weeks,
some menu items had plain-Jane labels (for example, "grilled chicken"
and "seafood filet"), while other foods had added verbiage like "succulent
Italian seafood filet" and "traditional Cajun red beans with rice."
Not only did customers purchase the descriptive items more frequently, they
also rated them as being of higher quality and better value than did customers
who ate items with unvarnished labels. "When people have positive associations
with a descriptive label, a chain reaction of positive attitudes and intentions
follows," Wansink and Painter wrote in an article to be published in Advances
in Consumer Research. "After enjoying their meal, customers are more likely
to give the meal a positive evaluation, and they are more likely to rate it
as being of higher quality and of a better value."
However, the same customers are not willing to pay more for foods with adjectival
overload, indicating that prose alone could not overcome resistance to high
prices.
Wansink and Painter found three kinds of descriptive menu labels most effective
in increasing sales – geographic, nostalgic and sensory.
Labels that evoked the foods and flavors of specific regions – such as
"Iowa pork chops" or "Southwestern Tex-Mex salad" –
created positive responses.
So did labels that triggered happy memories of bygone days and family traditions.
Examples included "Nana’s favorite chicken soup" and "ye
old potato bread."
Finally, descriptions such as "snappy" carrots and "buttery"
pasta that referred to the texture, taste or smell of a menu item were found
to be successful sellers.
Restaurant managers, however, should resist using descriptions that unjustifiably
inflate an eater’s expectations, the researchers warned. "Beware of
the temptation to label yesterday’s goulash as ‘Royal Hungarian Top
Sirloin Blend.’ It will generate first-time sales, but they may be the
last."
Koert van Ittersum, a postdoctoral researcher at the Illinois department of business administration, is the third author of the forthcoming article.