Food and Experiential Marketing

Pleasure, Wellbeing and Consumption

Wided Batat, Wided Batat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351182188
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Konsumverhalten

Pleasure plays a significant but often neglected role in the creation of consumer wellbeing and the relationship between the food consumption experience and healthy eating. This innovative collection focusses on the experiential and hedonic aspects of food and the sociocultural, economic, ideological, and symbolic factors that influence how pleasure can contribute to consumer health, food education, and individual and societal wellbeing.

Food and Experiential Marketing uses a holistic perspective to explore how the experiential side of food pleasure may drive healthy eating behaviors in varied food cultures. It questions: Is food pleasure an ally or an enemy of developing and adopting healthy eating habits? Can we design healthy offline and online food experiences that are pleasurable? What are the features of food consumption experiences, and how do they contribute to consumer wellbeing?

Providing an overview of experiential and cultural issues in food marketing, this book will be invaluable for consumer behavior and food marketing scholars, public policy professionals, and the food industry in understanding the importance of pleasure in promoting healthy eating behaviors.

1 Introduction to the experiential pleasure of food

How does pleasure advance consumer wellbeing and promote healthy eating behaviors?

Wided Batat

The introduction of the “experiential pleasure of food” is a new paradigm that promotes the epicurean consumption of food and its contribution to healthy eating, thus improving consumer wellbeing. The logic in this chapter goes beyond a visceral food approach based on biological needs to provide scholars, public policy, food industry, and marketers with a new epicurean approach based on enduring pleasure by identifying the key determinants of the experiential pleasure of food and their contributions to promoting healthy eating behaviors and consumer wellbeing. The prevailing dominant paradigm driving research and recommendations for promoting healthy eating behaviors is a visceral and rational eating pleasure. Cornil and Chandon (2016) define visceral eating pleasure as the short-lived hedonic relief created by the satisfaction of eating impulses. Visceral eating pleasure is the by-product of relieving a visceral urge, often beyond eaters’ volitional control, and it can be summarized by its valence (pleasant or unpleasant) regardless of the rich aesthetic experience of eating.

The existing rational and normative model of the relationship to food pleasure and health does not take a holistic and sociocultural perspective to explore the role of pleasure in food consumption and reveal how the experiential side of food may drive healthy eating habits. Indeed, food pleasure that can drive healthy eating behaviors depends on the sociocultural context and the food culture where it has been shaped. For example, in the North American food culture, the notion of pleasure (Alba and Williams, 2013) is separated from an individual’s daily life and is limited to special times where guilty pleasures (e.g., indulging in chocolate) are a moral failing. In the European food culture, especially in the French context, food education is based on everyday pleasurable food experiences. Besides, the concept of epicurean eating is applicable to consumers of all ages. Thus, instilling this type of approach amongst families with young children and adolescents who are developing their independence with significant discretionary spending on food and drink would seem really valuable for the future wellbeing of society. In this chapter, I propose a fundamental restructuring of the dominant paradigm from “food visceral pleasure” to “food as experiential pleasure.” Through a multidisciplinary analysis of the literature in human sciences as well as in marketing and consumer research on contemporary food behaviors, this chapter examines how the experiential pleasure of food may offer key insights into new approaches to promoting healthy eating and food wellbeing amongst contemporary societies by answering two major questions: What does the experiential pleasure of food mean? And how does it contribute to consumer wellbeing?

Food pleasure in consumer research

The analysis of the literature on food pleasure (carried out by using the database Web of Science Core Collection including only literature in English from 1995 to 2017 and the keywords combining “pleasure,” “experience,” “health,” and “food” in psychology biological; psychology clinical; psychology applied; sociology; business; psychology experimental; psychology; psychology social; or business finance) showed that amongst a total of 695 articles about food pleasure, published from 1995 to 2017, only 109 articles focused on food pleasure as it relates to the psychology, sociology, and business fields. Three of the articles focused on exploring food pleasure and its influence on purchase intentions (Nowlis and Shiv, 2005; Shiv and Nowlis, 2004), one analyzed food pleasure as it relates to eating intentions, while the remaining article focused on the relationship of food pleasure and portion control (Cornil and Chandon, 2016).

In their research on the relationship between food pleasure and purchase intentions, Nowlis and Shiv conducted experiments to test whether distractions affect the pleasure experienced during food sampling, and thus have a subsequent effect on consumer purchase intentions of the sampled product. Nowlis and Shiv found that the ultimate pleasure that a consumer derives from the taste of a food sample depends on two components, an informational component and an affective component. The findings suggest that distraction affects the subsequent choice of the sampled item by increasing the impact of the affective component on subsequent choice or by decreasing the impact of the informational component on subsequent choice (Nowlis and Shiv, 2005). Other research on the effect of food pleasure on eating intentions conducted by Moore (2014), who examined whether individual differences in affect intensity predict consumer’s responses to food advertisement, revealed three mediators (i.e., emotional memories, weak impulse control, and the intensity of pleasure anticipation) that indirectly link affect intensity to food cravings and behavioral intentions and two moderators (i.e., vividness of advertisement, dieting status of participants) of the relationship between affect intensity and consumption-related outcomes. The study conducted by Cornil and Chandon (2016) on the role of sensory pleasure on portion size choice had two main goals. The first objective was to explore ways to make people who have already decided to eat a hedonic food actually prefer (not just choose) smaller food portions, at no hedonic cost to themselves and no economic cost to producers. A second aim was to test whether sensory imagery increases the influence of sensory pleasure expectations over hunger satiation expectations in portion size choice. However, little is known about the experiential pleasure of food, and how it influences consumer preferences. Further, psychological studies of food choices and eating habits typically focus on the individual consumer, with bodily experiences conceptualized as separate events, underestimating the role of food consumption to the feeling of pleasure (Wiggins, 2002).

An experiential perspective on food pleasure

Although food meets a basic human need, it also has a strong influence on human emotion. It is commonly known to trigger positive emotions of nostalgia, comfort, and pleasure. For example, the sudden exposure to an enticing aroma can activate specific memories associated with the pleasures of food consumption (Moore, 2014). Yet, the same olfactory stimuli can also activate visceral impulses like a sudden urge to eat or drink, and in the absence of the restraining influence of cognitive deliberations, these visceral impulses can have a powerful impact on eating behavior that can lead to a wide range of psychological disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia, overeating, and depression (Wong and Qian, 2016). Thus, the impact of food on consumers’ physical and emotional health is significant. In contrast to an information-processing view of a consumer as an objective rational thinker, the experiential perspective focuses on a consumer’s subjective experience (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). That subjective experience may not conform to the goals of economic rationality, where consumers maximize preferences or outcomes. Instead, consumers can value more subjective outcomes such as wellbeing or enjoyment. Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) outline an experiential research approach that examines more subjective variables. For the domain of food, the multiple modes of sensory experience provide rich data for examining food consumption. In examining food consumption, the enjoyment of food can be an end goal: A gourmand savors the taste of each bit. Or a Chinese family may enjoy both the preparation of and eating of dumplings for the spring festival as a symbol of prosperity. In each case the consumption serves hedonic goals more than a basic utilitarian need of hunger.

The experiential approach can apply such hedonic meanings to construct or shift existing meanings for food. In this way hedonic meanings can serve as a bridge in achieving more utilitarian goals such as health or moderation in eating. Hedonic consumption is defined as “facets of consumer behavior that relate to multisensory images, fantasies, and emotive aspects of product usage experience” (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982: 82); consumption that “is (and is expected to be) pleasurable” (Alba and Williams, 2013: 4). While Holbrook and Hirschman emphasize subconscious and less accessible mental constructs in the experiential approach, why should thoughts and concepts easily accessible in memory be excluded from our view of experience? Both conscious and subconscious mental formations work together to give meaning to hedonic outcomes. Even in the case of consuming chocolate for a sensual experience, both conscious and subconscious thoughts derive meaning for the consumer. We can see this experiential approach applied to the eating experience in recent literature where eating for hedonic goals diverges into two categorically different types called visceral and epicurean (Cornil and Chandon, 2016). Because these two types rely on different subjective meanings, an information processing approach would not easily identify their patterns. An experiential approach to food and pleasure employs this appreciation of symbolic meaning to decipher different consumer paths and outcomes.

Evidence shows that positive emotions can lead to an enhanced eating experience and choice of healthier foods (Macht, 1999). When discussing the experiential pleasure of food, it is valuable to take into account key determinants, food experiences, and activities; from production and distribution to eating and disposal that are embedded within a particular food culture and shaped by its history, social norms, values, beliefs, etc. Therefore, the experiential pleasure of food can be related to all food activities, is influenced by individual, micro, and macro determinants, and driven by both utilitarian and hedonic motives. For example, growing food can be a passion or an occupation, likewise cooking can be a beloved hobby or an undesirable obligation. There is no simplistic way of separating or examining the relative strength of these motives. What does endure is food consumption’s experience association with pleasure. To increase the opportunity for greater food wellbeing, pleasurable nature of these activities must be increased by identifying the key determinants that can enhance the experiential pleasure of food and thus help consumers achieve their food wellbeing goals. Thus, I define the experiential pleasure of food as: the cognitive and emotional value that a consumer perceives from the multisensory, symbolic, and sociocultural determinants of food experiential activities. As Table 1.1 shows, I identified seven primary determinants that characterize the experiential pleasure of food framework: food aestheticism, food socialization, food sharing, food storytelling, food memory and nostalgia, food symbolism, and food taste and sensory.

Table 1.1 Key determinants of the experiential pleasure of food

Determinants	Focal concepts	Contribution to consumer wellbeing	Policy implications	Marketing and business implications
Food aestheticism	Food appearance Food as art Multisensory food perception Food pleasure vs. food disgust	Positive relationship with food Opportunities for social connection More mindful choices	Enhance the appearance/taste congruence of healthy, socially responsible, and sustainable foods	Position healthy and sustainable food based on multisensory food aesthetics that is appealing to consumers
Food socialization	Modeling Explicit (e.g., family) and implicit (e.g., school) means of learning about food Cultural norms	Taste preference development Personal relationship to food Social norms	Consider how media portray specific foods to vulnerable consumers (e.g., low-literate consumers and kids)Formalized taste education	Position healthy and sustainable foods through marketing as socialization agent for food activities
Food sharing	Commensality Collaborative consumption Sharing economy	Enjoyment Affiliation Learning	Support community and school activitiesInitiate food safety laws Support alternative food networks Support family meal time	Develop food sharing apps Involvement with consumption communitiesIncrease of healthy, family-friendly eateries
Food storytelling	Food meanings Food symbolisms Food semiotics Food interactionism	Community Pleasure ComfortKinship	Build food narratives that promote intersectionality in order to promote healthy and sustainable foods	Pursue more beneficial health alternatives and increase food well being based on focal concepts related to food storytelling
Food memory and nostalgia	Positive and negative food memories(Gastro) nostalgia	Conscious awareness of food memories and nostalgia	Increase children’s food preferences for healthier alternatives in adulthood	Increase use of nostalgia to promote healthier food products in adulthood
Food symbolism	Food meaning as subjectively constructed but still embedded in a sociocultural context	New associations are formed related to the promotion of healthy and sustainable food	Initiate communications to change food meanings to complement school lunch programs	Promote healthier food choices consistent with new food meanings
Food taste and sensory	Individual senses Multi sensory experiences	Interdisciplinary approach to understanding the pleasure of food	Inform healthy eating initiatives and food socialization interventions	Inform food marketing practices

These determinants will help scholars, marketers, food industry, and policymakers to develop new educational programs and marketing actions based on the promotion of healthy eating by considering one or several key determinants of the experiential pleasure of food. The following section will introduce and explain how each determinant of the experiential pleasure of food can contribute to consumer wellbeing.

Key determinants of the experiential pleasure of food

Food aestheticism

The sight of food causes a myriad of responses in consumers, ranging from the release of insulin and heart rate shifts to preparing the body for food ingestion (Wallner-Liebmann et al., 2010), to emotional responses compelling the consumer to ingest the food (Ouwenhand and Papies, 2010), to the retrieval of memories associated with the food and expectations of flavors based on prior experiences (Shin et al., 2009). Thus, food can provide experiential pleasure even before it is consumed, expl...