Purpose

This paper aims to offer social marketers an innovative method to promote healthy foods. This method demonstrates the effectiveness of indirect communication in attracting consumers to healthy foods. Further, it aims to offer a way to promote food as healthier with no detrimental effects on its perceived appeal, which are a likely side effect of advertising food as healthy.

Design/methodology/approach

Four between-participant lab studies (N = 50, 80, 80, 102) included manipulations of food motion vs stillness and then compared ratings of food freshness, healthiness and appeal using self-report measures.

Findings

Motion increases healthiness evaluation. This increase in healthiness evaluation occurs without reductions in food appeal. These effects are mediated by evaluations of freshness. This occurred across three different food types and two mediums (still images and digital videos).

Research limitations/implications

The paper provides an effective tool for social marketers wishing to encourage healthier eating. Specifically, it helps address two problems: low effectiveness of prevalent, information-based appeals to encourage healthy eating; and reduced evaluations of tastiness that normally occur when consumers are convinced food is healthy.

Social implications

Social marketers can use motion as an effective tool to promote food as healthy. Importantly, this indirect communication avoids the potential pitfall of reduced food appeal. This should help encourage healthier eating. The findings also supports the use of indirect cues as an effective approach to promoting social ends.

Originality/value

Offering a novel, indirect method of enhancing judgments of food healthiness via a simple visual cue. Demonstrating the effect and its underlying mechanism. Providing a way to counter the prevalent “unhealthy = tasty” intuition, a major obstacle to promoting healthy eating. Supporting social marketers’ use of indirect communication to increase the appeal of desirable societal goals. Finally, showing that sensory visual cues can serve as a source of heuristic thinking.

中文翻译：

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迈向健康：暗示食物健康和吸引力

目的

本文旨在为社会营销人员提供一种促进健康食品的创新方法。这种方法证明了间接交流在吸引消费者购买健康食品方面的有效性。此外，其目的在于提供一种促进食品健康的方法，而不会对其感知吸引力产生有害影响，而这可能是宣传食品健康的可能的副作用。

设计/方法/方法

参加者之间的四项实验室研究（N = 50、80、80、102）包括操纵食物运动与静止的关系，然后使用自我报告的方法比较食物新鲜度，健康度和吸引力的等级。

发现

运动增加健康评估。健康评估的增加不会降低食品的吸引力。这些效果是通过评估新鲜度来介导的。这发生在三种不同的食物类型和两种媒介（静态图像和数字视频）上。

研究局限/意义

本文为希望鼓励健康饮食的社会营销人员提供了有效的工具。具体说来，它有助于解决两个问题：基于信息的普遍呼吁在鼓励健康饮食方面效果不佳；当消费者确信食物是健康的时，通常会降低对美味的评价。

社会影响

社交营销人员可以将运动作为促进健康食品的有效工具。重要的是，这种间接沟通避免了减少食物吸引力的潜在陷阱。这应该有助于鼓励更健康的饮食。研究结果还支持使用间接线索作为促进社会目的的有效方法。

创意/价值

提供一种新颖，间接的方法，通过简单的视觉提示增强对食品健康性的判断。演示效果及其潜在机制。提供一种应对普遍存在的“不健康=好吃”直觉的方法，这是促进健康饮食的主要障碍。支持社交营销人员使用间接沟通来提高理想的社会目标的吸引力。最后，表明感觉视觉提示可以作为启发式思维的来源。