The color-flavor incongruency effect elicited by flavor stimuli and words

Previous research has shown that consumers associate specific packaging colors with flavors to generate the color-flavor associations for packaging. Previous studies have also demonstrated that people search more slowly for a product when its color is incongruent with its flavor label than when it is congruent with this flavor, indicative of a packaging color-flavor incongruency effect. Here we report a behavioral study designed to investigate whether actual flavor stimuli can also elicit this effect, and if so, how the effect differs when flavor cues are presented as flavor words versus flavor stimuli. Participants were asked to search for a beverage product labeled with a specific flavor after either tasting flavor stimuli or viewing a flavor word. The results showed that the participants responded faster and more accurately when they were cued by flavor words than flavor stimuli. Moreover, we also found that both flavor stimuli and flavor words could elicit the packaging color-flavor incongruency effect, and the effect elicited by flavor stimuli was greater than that elicited by flavor words. The findings of the present study provide empirical evidence of the crossmodal influence of flavor information on visual search, and also have direct implications for using sensory marketing strategies to enhance consumers’ product search efficiency.