What Do You Want to Eat? Influence of Menu Description and Design on Consumer’s Mind: An fMRI Study

• Main Authors: Diego Gómez-Carmona, Francisco Muñoz-Leiva, Alberto Paramio, Francisco Liébana-Cabanillas, Serafín Cruces-Montes
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Foods
• Subjects: restaurant dish; design dish; description; neuromarketing; emotion; pleasant
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/5/919

The main objective of this research was to analyse the active regions when processing dishes with a pleasant (vs. unpleasant) design and the effect of the previously read rational (vs. emotional) description when visualising the dish. The functional magnetic resonance image technique was used for the study. The results showed that participants who visualised pleasant vs. unpleasant dishes became active in several domains (e.g., attention, cognition and reward). On the other side, visualisation of unpleasant dishes activated stronger regions linked to inhibition, rejection, and related ambiguity. We found that subjects who read rational descriptions when visualising pleasant dishes activated regions related to congruence integration, while subjects who visualised emotional descriptions showed an increased neuronal response to pleasant dishes in the regions related to memory, emotion and congruence.