Extrinsic Auditory Contributions to Food Perception & Consumer Behaviour: an Interdisciplinary Review.
TL;DR: The latest evidence concerning the various ways in which what the authors hear can influence what they taste leads to the growing realization that the crossmodal influences of music and noise on food perception and consumer behaviour may have some important if, as yet, unrecognized implications for public health.
Abstract: Food product-extrinsic sounds (i.e., those auditory stimuli that are not linked directly to a food or beverage product, or its packaging) have been shown to exert a significant influence over various aspects of food perception and consumer behaviour, often operating outside of conscious awareness. In this review, we summarise the latest evidence concerning the various ways in which what we hear can influence what we taste. According to one line of empirical research, background noise interferes with tasting, due to attentional distraction. A separate body of marketing-relevant research demonstrates that music can be used to bias consumers' food perception, judgments, and purchasing/consumption behaviour in various ways. Some of these effects appear to be driven by the arousal elicited by loud music as well as the entrainment of people's behaviour to the musical beat. However, semantic priming effects linked to the type and style of music are also relevant. Another route by which music influences food perception comes from the observation that our liking/preference for the music that we happen to be listening to carries over to influence our hedonic judgments of what we are tasting. A final route by which hearing influences tasting relates to the emerging field of 'sonic seasoning'. A developing body of research now demonstrates that people often rate tasting experiences differently when listening to soundtracks that have been designed to be (or are chosen because they are) congruent with specific flavour experiences (e.g., when compared to when listening to other soundtracks, or else when tasting in silence). Taken together, such results lead to the growing realization that the crossmodal influences of music and noise on food perception and consumer behaviour may have some important if, as yet, unrecognized implications for public health.
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TL;DR: The role of technology in inhibiting/facilitating the more pleasurable social aspects of dining, what one might call “digital commensality,” is focused on Westernized adults with reasonable access to, and familiarity with, digital technologies.
Abstract: Commensality is a key aspect of social dining. However, previous research has identified a number of pros and cons associated with the incorporation of digital technology into eating and drinking episodes. For instance, those who are distracted by digital technology may eat/drink more (that is, they may overconsume) as a result of their failure to attend to the food-related sensations that are thought to cue the termination of eating. Similarly, it has often been suggested that the use of mobile devices at mealtimes can disrupt the more commensal aspects of dining/drinking (at least among those who are physically present together). At the same time, however, looking to the future, it seems clear that digital technologies also hold the promise of delivering opportunities for enhanced multisensory experiential dining. For instance, they might be used to match the auditory, visual, or audiovisual entertainment to the eating/drinking episode (e.g., think only about watching a Bollywood movie while eating a home-delivery Indian meal, say). Indeed, given the growing societal problems associated with people dining by themselves, there are a number of routes by which digital technologies may increasingly help to connect the solo diner with physically co-located, remote, or even virtual dining partners. In this review of the literature, our focus is specifically on the role of technology in inhibiting/facilitating the more pleasurable social aspects of dining, what one might call "digital commensality." The focus is primarily on Westernized adults with reasonable access to, and familiarity with, digital technologies.
82 citations
TL;DR: A new framework of multisensory flavour integration is proposed focusing not on the food-intrinsic/extrinsics divide, but rather on whether the sensory information is perceived to originate from within or outside the body.
Abstract: When it comes to eating and drinking, multiple factors from diverse sensory modalities have been shown to influence multisensory flavour perception and liking. These factors have heretofore been strictly divided into either those that are intrinsic to the food itself (e.g., food colour, aroma, texture), or those that are extrinsic to it (e.g., related to the packaging, receptacle or external environment). Given the obvious public health need for sugar reduction, the present review aims to compare the relative influences of product-intrinsic and product-extrinsic factors on the perception of sweetness. Evidence of intrinsic and extrinsic sensory influences on sweetness are reviewed. Thereafter, we take a cognitive neuroscience perspective and evaluate how differences may occur in the way that food-intrinsic and extrinsic information become integrated with sweetness perception. Based on recent neuroscientific evidence, we propose a new framework of multisensory flavour integration focusing not on the food-intrinsic/extrinsic divide, but rather on whether the sensory information is perceived to originate from within or outside the body. This framework leads to a discussion on the combinability of intrinsic and extrinsic influences, where we refer to some existing examples and address potential theoretical limitations. To conclude, we provide recommendations to those in the food industry and propose directions for future research relating to the need for long-term studies and understanding of individual differences.
75 citations
Cites background from "Extrinsic Auditory Contributions to..."
...The influence of sound on taste and flavour perception can be considered in terms of expectations, emotion mediation, attentional direction, physiological reaction or just bias [79,158]....
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TL;DR: Inspired by previous research on a diverse array of factors that have been shown to influence food and beverage choice, the review examines how beer choice is driven by consumer variables, product-intrinsic attributes (the sensory aspects of the beer itself), product-extrinsics attributes (external sensory characteristics, such as packaging), and contextual and environmental influences.
61 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that the various perceptual pairing principles/outcomes identified when flavours are paired deliberately can also be meaningfully extended to provide a coherent framework when it comes to categorizing the ways in which what the authors hear can influence their flavour experiences, both in terms of the sensory-discriminative and hedonic response.
Abstract: This review summarizes the various outcomes that may occur when two or more elements are paired in the context of flavour perception. In the first part, I review the literature concerning what happens when flavours, ingredients, and/or culinary techniques are deliberately combined in a dish, drink, or food product. Sometimes the result is fusion but, if one is not careful, the result can equally well be confusion instead. In fact, blending, mixing, fusion, and flavour pairing all provide relevant examples of how the elements in a carefully-crafted multi-element tasting experience may be combined. While the aim is sometimes to obscure the relative contributions of the various elements to the mix (as in the case of blending), at other times, consumers/tasters are explicitly encouraged to contemplate/perceive the nature of the relationship between the contributing elements instead (e.g., as in the case of flavour pairing). There has been a noticeable surge in both popular and commercial interest in fusion foods and flavour pairing in recent years, and various of the 'rules' that have been put forward to help explain the successful combination of the elements in such food and/or beverage experiences are discussed. In the second part of the review, I examine the pairing of flavour stimuli with music/soundscapes, in the emerging field of 'sonic seasoning'. I suggest that the various perceptual pairing principles/outcomes identified when flavours are paired deliberately can also be meaningfully extended to provide a coherent framework when it comes to categorizing the ways in which what we hear can influence our flavour experiences, both in terms of the sensory-discriminative and hedonic response.
43 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated taste-speech sound correspondences by systematically manipulating the vowels and consonants comprising fictitious brand names and found that front (back) vowels increased expected sweetness (bitterness), fricative (stop) consonants increased expected saltiness/bitterness, voiceless (voiceless), and affricate consonants exerted a greater influence on expected taste than did the vowel.
42 citations
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01 Jan 1927
TL;DR: The development of the objective method in investigating the physiological activities of the cerebral hemispheres and the concept of Reflex, the most fundamental physiological characteristic of the hemisphere, is studied.
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TL;DR: A consistent neural response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was reported that correlated with subjects' behavioral preferences for Coke and Pepsi and brand knowledge for one of the drinks had a dramatic influence on expressed behavioral preferences and on the measured brain responses.
1,174 citations
TL;DR: The literature reviewed here supports the view thatCrossmodal correspondences need to be considered alongside semantic and spatiotemporal congruency, among the key constraints that help the authors' brains solve the crossmodal binding problem.
Abstract: In many everyday situations, our senses are bombarded by many different unisensory signals at any given time. To gain the most veridical, and least variable, estimate of environmental stimuli/properties, we need to combine the individual noisy unisensory perceptual estimates that refer to the same object, while keeping those estimates belonging to different objects or events separate. How, though, does the brain “know” which stimuli to combine? Traditionally, researchers interested in the crossmodal binding problem have focused on the roles that spatial and temporal factors play in modulating multisensory integration. However, crossmodal correspondences between various unisensory features (such as between auditory pitch and visual size) may provide yet another important means of constraining the crossmodal binding problem. A large body of research now shows that people exhibit consistent crossmodal correspondences between many stimulus features in different sensory modalities. For example, people consistently match high-pitched sounds with small, bright objects that are located high up in space. The literature reviewed here supports the view that crossmodal correspondences need to be considered alongside semantic and spatiotemporal congruency, among the key constraints that help our brains solve the crossmodal binding problem.
1,133 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the effect of background music on the behavior of restaurant customers was examined and it was found that music tempo variations can significantly affect purchases, length of stay and other variables examined.
Abstract: This paper will critically review the limited literature available on the topic and present an empirical study that examines the effect of background music on the behavior of restaurant customers. It was found that music tempo variations can significantly affect purchases, length of stay, and other variables examined.
891 citations
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675 citations