Memory color effect induced by familiarity of brand logos.

BACKGROUND: When people are asked to adjust the color of familiar objects such as fruits until they appear achromatic, the subjective gray points of the objects are shifted away from the physical gray points in a direction opposite to the memory color (memory color effect). It is still unclear whether the discrepancy between memorized and actual colors of objects is dependent on the familiarity of the objects. Here, we conducted two experiments in order to examine the relationship between the degree of a subject's familiarity with objects and the degree of the memory color effect by using logographs of food and beverage companies. METHODS AND FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, we measured the memory color effects of logos which varied in terms of their familiarity (high, middle, or low). Results demonstrate that the memory color effect occurs only in the high-familiarity condition, but not in the middle- and low-familiarity conditions. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the memory color effect and the actual number of domestic stores of the brand. In Experiment 2, we assessed the semantic association between logos and food/beverage names by using a semantic priming task to elucidate whether the memory color effect of logos relates to consumer brand cognition, and found that the semantic associations between logos and food/beverage names in the high-familiarity brands were stronger than those in the low-familiarity brands only when the logos were colored correctly, but not when they were appropriately or inappropriately colored, or achromatic. CONCLUSION: The current results provide behavioral evidence of the relationship between the familiarity of objects and the memory color effect and suggest that the memory color effect increases with the familiarity of objects, albeit not constantly.

Dish influences implicit gender-based food stereotypes among young Japanese adults.

The present study explored whether the gender impression of a dish affects the gender stereotypes of foods. We assessed gender stereotypes of food among young Japanese adults using a semantic priming task. As prime stimuli, we took pictures of food in combination with a dish. We used feminine- and masculine-evaluated foods and dishes in order to create four different combinations of food and dishes. In the semantic priming task, we primed the participants (n=58) with the pictures of food-dish combinations and immediately after the priming, we presented them with forenames as target stimuli and let them decide whether the forename given was feminine or masculine. By so doing, we estimated the semantic association between the food-dish combinations with gender. The results demonstrate that gender impressions of dishes affect gender stereotypes toward foods. The feminine-evaluated dish exhibited a facilitation of the femininity and an inhibition of the masculinity of foods. Similarly, the masculine-evaluated dish exhibited a facilitation of the masculinity and an inhibition of the femininity of foods. These results suggest that gender-based stereotypical attitudes toward food pictures are determined by the combination of gender impressions for both the food itself and its dish.

Interactive effects of carbon footprint information and its accessibility on value and subjective qualities of food products.

We aimed to explore the interactive effects of the accessibility of information and the degree of carbon footprint score on consumers' value judgments of food products. Participants (n=151, undergraduate students in Japan) rated their maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for four food products varying in information accessibility (active-search or read-only conditions) and in carbon footprint values (low, middle, high, or non-display) provided. We also assessed further effects of information accessibly and carbon footprint value on other product attributes utilizing the subjective estimation of taste, quality, healthiness, and environmental friendliness. Results of the experiment demonstrated an interactive effect of information accessibility and the degree of carbon emission on consumer valuation of carbon footprint-labeled food. The carbon footprint value had a stronger impact on participants' WTP in the active-search condition than in the read-only condition. Similar to WTP, the results of the subjective ratings for product qualities also exhibited an interactive effect of the two factors on the rating of environmental friendliness for products. These results imply that the perceived environmental friendliness inferable from a carbon footprint label contributes to creating value for a food product.

Influence of luminance distribution on the appetizingly fresh appearance of cabbage.

We investigated the effect that the parameters of luminance distribution in fresh food have on our visual perception of its freshness. We took pictures of the degradation over 32 h in freshness of a cabbage. We used original images, which were patches of the pictures taken at different sampling hours, and artificially generated pictures, called "matched images," created by fitting the luminance histogram shape of the original image (taken at the 1st hour) to those at various freshness stages using a luminance histogram-matching algorithm. Nine participants rated the perceived freshness of the original and the matched images on a scale of degradation. As a result, we found that the participants could quantitatively estimate the degradation in freshness of the cabbage simply by looking at the presented images. Some parameters of the luminance histograms monotonically change with decreasing freshness, indicating that the freshness of cabbage can be estimated using these parameters. However, the freshness ratings for the matched images after the 8th hour of degradation had lower modification than those for the respective original images. These results suggest that the luminance distribution in the vegetable texture partly contributes to visual freshness perception but other variables, such as spatial patterns, might also be important for estimating visual freshness.

Implicit gender-based food stereotypes. Semantic priming experiments on young Japanese.

We explored the feasibility of introducing implicit attitude measures for the study of food-related stereotypes by assessing gender-based food stereotypes among young Japanese using a semantic priming paradigm. Thirty-seven Japanese university students were asked to judge if a given forename was male or female immediately after the presentation of a food-name prime stimulus. The participants required significantly less time to verify the gender of forenames when the stereotyped gender of the food and the gender of forename were congruent than when they were incongruent. We demonstrate that a semantic priming paradigm is capable of uncovering implicit gender-based food stereotypes.

Consumer valuation of packaged foods. Interactive effects of amount and accessibility of information.

Food purchasing decisions of consumers are influenced by information on food labels such as origin and nutritional value of the food product. Thus, we aimed to elucidate the impact of the amount and accessibility of information on consumers' value judgment of food products. Participants (n=120, Japanese university students) rated their maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for three food products varying in information accessibility (active-search or read-only conditions) and in the amount of information (small, medium, or large) provided. We will demonstrate that a consumer's WTP depends on the interaction between these two factors. In the active-search condition, food products with a large amount of information were valued significantly higher than those with less information. However, in the read-only condition, food products with a medium amount of information were valued significantly higher than those with little information, and there was no significant difference between conditions with large and small amounts of information. To conclude, a larger amount of information led to a higher value only when participants searched for the information actively, whereas a moderate amount of information did the best when participants are only allowed to read the information.