Seeing is Tasting: Effects of Visual Design on Multisensory Food Experience in the Context of Online Platforms

This study investigated whether and how food imagery with repetition and different compositional lines influences crossmodal correspondences between vision and taste in the context of food consumption through Instagram (Study 1) and an online food ordering platform (Study 2). Using cheeseburgers and iced tea photos as visual stimuli, the results revealed that, in many cases, the effect of repetition on visual appeal significantly increased from 1 item to 2-item repetition, but the perceived visual appeal did not significantly increase from 2-item to 3-item repetition. This finding indicates that 2-item repetition may be an optimal level of complexity for pleasing, after which further visual complexity decreases the viewer’s pleasure. Particularly, the results from beverage imagery showed that the effect of repetition was found in the right diagonal condition. For the cheeseburger photos, the results showed that differences between types of compositional lines were found in 3-item repetition. Although the significantly different pairs of compositional lines were not exactly the same in both the Instagram and online food ordering platform settings, this study found that horizontal compositions had a lesser effect on visual appeal compared to other compositions throughout the cheeseburger and iced tea experiments. In addition, right diagonal lines were relatively more effective in terms of visual appeal and the crossmodal responses, except for the cheeseburger in Study 2. A series of experiments provided evidence of crossmodal correspondences between vision and taste by demonstrating serial mediating effects of visual appeal and taste perception on behavioral intention. The results of this study also suggest guidance for industry practitioners in planning and executing multisensory marketing strategies with their online food imagery; for example, using menu photos with repetition of food items (e.g., 2-item repetition) and a specific type of compositional line (e.g., right diagonal composition) is more effective for taste perception and behavioral intention rather than just using incidental menu photos. Taken together, the findings of this study provide insights with regard to multisensory food research by elucidating empirical evidence on the visual principles of repetition and compositional lines and a mechanism of multimodal correspondences.