Expectations generated based on associative learning guide visual search for novel packaging labels

Abstract

Previous research has shown that people can generate expectations regarding the color of a food packaging labeled with a certain flavor based on the color-flavor associations formulated through long-term experiences, and rely on these color expectations to guide their searches for packaged foods having certain flavor labels. Here we report three experiments designed to examine whether people can also generate such color expectations through short-term associations learning to guide their product searches for novel labels irrelevant to the attributes of food products (e.g., constellation labels). The participants performed the visual search for the packaging with the target constellation label before and after they had learned the color associations for half of the constellation labels but not for the rest of the labels. In Experiment 1, we found that the interaction of learning stage (before or after) and label type (learned or unlearned) was significant in response time. After learning the color-constellation associations, they showed faster searches for the constellation labels whose color associations they had learned (vs unlearned). Experiment 2 excluded the interference effect of familiarity in the learning task on the subsequent product search gain to a certain degree. The incongruent color-constellation association stimuli were added in the post-test phase in Experiment 3, which further verified that the participants searched based on color expectations in the product search after the explicit learning task. These results suggest that learning the color associations for novel labels can facilitate people’s searches for these labels, presumably due to the color expectations generated based on these associations. These findings provide empirical evidence that expectations can be formulated based on recent experiences, and shed light on the bright future of using novel labels in the marketing practice of product differentiation.