Customizing your way to health: How self-customization influences food choices

Abstract

Companies are increasingly adopting self-customization, allowing customers to create personalized products. In the food and beverage industry, this is often provided at no extra cost. While most consumers believe that adding more options maximizes the benefit in self-customization, which leads companies to adopt pay-per-add pricing models to manage costs, this logic does not always hold in food consumption. In this context, adding more can compromise health goals and diminish the taste experience. Across a field study conducted with a pizza restaurant that temporarily switched from a fixed à-la-carte menu to a self-customization menu and two controlled experiments, we demonstrate that self-customization in indulgent contexts leads to healthier choices—pizzas with fewer calories and fat calories—by enhancing a sense of autonomy. We further identify a boundary condition, where the positive effect of self-customization diminishes in healthy contexts, such as when choosing a salad.