{"title":"Is Your Food Organic? Examining the Role of Food Aesthetics in Restaurant Marketing","authors":"Xi Yu, Stephanie Q. Liu","doi":"10.1177/10963480211067275","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Many restaurants believe that an aesthetically pleasing food presentation can help attract customers and elevate their evaluations. Yet the effectiveness of expressive aesthetics and the psychological processes associated with its use are not well understood in hospitality research. This study adopts a consumer behavior lens to explore how expressive aesthetics affects consumers’ decision making about organic versus conventional food in the restaurant setting. Findings reveal that the expressive aesthetics strategy is effective when marketing conventional, nonorganic food; however, such a strategy decreases consumers’ purchase intentions when the food is described as organic. Furthermore, an investigation of the underlying psychological mechanism indicates that anticipated pleasure and food temptation serially mediate the impacts of expressive aesthetics and food type on purchase intention.","PeriodicalId":51409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10963480211067275","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Many restaurants believe that an aesthetically pleasing food presentation can help attract customers and elevate their evaluations. Yet the effectiveness of expressive aesthetics and the psychological processes associated with its use are not well understood in hospitality research. This study adopts a consumer behavior lens to explore how expressive aesthetics affects consumers’ decision making about organic versus conventional food in the restaurant setting. Findings reveal that the expressive aesthetics strategy is effective when marketing conventional, nonorganic food; however, such a strategy decreases consumers’ purchase intentions when the food is described as organic. Furthermore, an investigation of the underlying psychological mechanism indicates that anticipated pleasure and food temptation serially mediate the impacts of expressive aesthetics and food type on purchase intention.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research (JHTR) is an international scholarly research journal that publishes high-quality, refereed articles that advance the knowledge base of the hospitality and tourism field. JHTR focuses on original research, both conceptual and empirical, that clearly contributes to the theoretical development of our field. The word contribution is key. Simple applications of theories from other disciplines to a hospitality or tourism context are not encouraged unless the authors clearly state why this context significantly advances theory or knowledge. JHTR encourages research based on a variety of methods, qualitative and quantitative.