Story at a glance
- Researchers for The Ohio State University found that the words “consumer complaint” can easily ruin a person’s perception of a cookie’s taste.
- For the study, 120 participants aged 18 to 70 sampled three identical crackers or cookies on three separate plates: one labeled “factory sample,” one labeled “new and improved,” and one labeled “consumer complaints.”
- Researchers found that participants overwhelmingly suffered from confirmation bias, specifically negatively, based on the labeling.
A lot of factors can affect the taste of a cookie: the amount of sugar, how long it baked and, now, two small words.
Researchers for The Ohio State University found that the words “consumer complaint” can easily ruin a person’s perception of a cookie’s taste.
“On one hand, it’s not surprising,” Christopher Simons, associate professor of food science and technology at the university and senior author of the study, said in a press release. “On the other hand, the degree of the impact was really surprising.”
Published in the April 2022 volume of the journal Food Quality and Preference, researchers tested the effect food labels had on consumer preferences.
For the study, 120 participants aged 18 to 70 sampled three identical crackers or cookies on three separate plates: one labeled “factory sample,” one labeled “new and improved” and one labeled “consumer complaints.” The participants were then rated each on a 0-9 scale for categories like freshness and flavor.
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Researchers found that participants overwhelmingly suffered from confirmation bias, specifically negatively, based on the labeling.
“With the negative contextualized messaging, there were more negative attributes selected – people didn’t like it as much, it wasn’t as fresh. People had a more negative opinion of it,” said Simons. “The positive messaging slanted toward being more positive, but not nearly as much.”
To the researchers, the results suggest that when marketing food products, companies should focus more on “teasing out what customers perceive as negative” as opposed to “optimizing positive attributes.”
“If people are more sensitive to those taints, we can use it to our advantage as it relates to food,” Simons said. “You get a bigger bang for your buck by removing things people find negative than you do by optimizing those positive attributes. Take care of the negatives first and you’re probably going to have a more successful product.”
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