How Color in Photos Can Make Food Look Tastier
hubie writes:
Study finds saturation in images is key to marketing menu items:
An appealing photo of a pizza or other menu item can help a restaurant increase sales - especially if the right filter is used, a new study suggests.
Photos high in color saturation make food look fresher and tastier to viewers, which increases their willingness to order the menu items, researchers found.
Color saturation refers to the intensity of the color in the image - the vividness and richness of the reds and greens and blues.
But how well color saturation works to make food appealing depends on the visual distance of the food in the photo - and even on whether consumers plan to dine alone or with others.
[...] "On Instagram, it means using the 'X-Pro II' filter on your food photos rather than the 'Earlybird' filter," Liu said. "It is not difficult and doesn't cost a dime, so it is an easy win for restaurant marketers."
[...] The food in the more highly saturated photos looked fresher and tastier to participants, and that led them to be more likely to purchase the food, results showed.
But color saturation had a stronger effect when the food appeared more distant in the photos, Liu said.
"When the food is shown close up, it is already easy for the viewers to imagine how fresh and tasty the food would be," she said. "Color saturation is not as necessary."
[...] "Restaurants have to post pictures of their food on social media and online ordering platforms," she said.
"They should be paying as much attention, or maybe more, to the photos they post as they do to the text. Color saturation is one key element they need to focus on."
Journal Reference:
Stephanie Q. Liu, Laurie Luorong Wu, Xi Yu, and Huiling Huang, Marketing online food images via color saturation: A sensory imagery perspective, J Bus Res, 151, 2002. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.06.061
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.