Do emotions drive sales?
| It is something which seems really obvious, but there is now proof that emotions drive sales of foods and beverages.
Food manufacturers have for a long long time put pictures of their foods on the labelling to encourage sales by making people know what is there and that it looks good and it appeals to their emotions. Wine labels generally don’t have pictures of the grapes but do contain beautiful descriptions of the flavours in the wine and where the grapes were grown and processed. The descriptions include words like; fruity, chocolately etc etc For most of us, we would not be able to place those flavours in what we drink, but they sure do sound good and give an idea of what is inside the bottle. Few are actually involved in the making of wine, so these descriptions help us know about what is in the bottle and help us decide whether to purchase or not. A study by the University of Adelaide has shown that these sort of descriptions of the wine and it’s production encourage do sales. The study was published in the  August 2017 edition of the Food Research International Journal. It was funded by grape growers and wine makers and the funding was matched by the Commonwealth Government. Research leader, Associate Professor Sue Bastian, said; “Cleverly written wine and producer descriptions when coupled with unbranded wine tasting can evoke more positive emotions, increasing our positive perception of the wine, our estimation of its quality and the amount we would be willing to pay for it.” The study involved Australian white wines using three different information labels. The 126 consumers were asked to taste the wines using the tree types of labels; no information, basic description (eg; Riesling) and one with a description similar to those we see commercially. |
The study found that even though the wine in the bottle was the same, the descriptive label significantly increased the preference for the wine.
The results of this study are something that other industries should look at closely as it shows just how important words, and the right words the right way are to sales.
Researcher, Dr Lukas Danner, said; “Companies could even consider involving consumers in label description optimisation.”