Too Cute to Be Healthy: How Cute Packaging Designs Affect Judgments of Product Tastiness and Healthiness

In the packaged food market, several brands use cute packaging designs, for example, by displaying playful colors or funny cartoon-like pictures. However, prior research has not systematically examined how cute packaging designs might affect product perception. In this research, we show that cute packaging designs increase perceptions of product tastiness and, at the same time, decrease perceptions of product healthiness. Importantly, as perceptions of both tastiness and healthiness jointly determine purchase intention, we further examine the role of the product type in order to demonstrate how marketers may benefit from using cute packaging designs. We find that cute packaging designs increase consumer purchase intention for relative vice products but decrease consumer purchase intention for relative virtue products. This article thus extends the current packaging design literature and demonstrates how marketers can strategically use cute packaging designs to communicate their desired product attributes. Furthermore, we outline implications for public policy makers.