What’s in a “Happy” Meal? The Effect of Smiley Faces in Restaurant Logos on Price and Healthfulness Perceptions: An Abstract

Abstract

Emojis are being increasingly used in different types of communications, including in advertising campaigns. One prominent emoji, the smiley face, has become an integral part of consumer communications. Subsequently, smiley faces have become prominent in marketing communications, advertisements, and brand logos as well. For instance, in 2016, Wal-Mart brought back its smiley icon, signifying especially low prices and deals (Neff, 2016). Within restaurants, smileys now appear within the logos of several chains such as IHOP (Stinson, 2015), Hardee’s, and Carl’s Jr. However, the most well-known example is McDonald’s. While smiley faces are visible on brand logos across a wide variety of categories, we focus on the restaurant industry because of the prominence of the McDonald’s smiley face. The present research examines the role of smiley faces in restaurant logos as a form of marketing communication. A well-designed logo should have recognizable features and induce positive affect (Henderson & Cote, 1998). Inserting a smiley face in a logo design may act as a simple way to achieve the latter. However, Fajardo et al. (2016) show that existing associations with specific logo elements (such as frames or boundaries around a logo) can influence product purchase intent. Using logos with smiley faces on advertising and communication materials may, therefore, have unexpected consequences. Building on research on associative models of memory (Suzuki, 2005), we argue that a pre-existing association and categorization with the fast-food restaurant category would negatively influence healthfulness perceptions without other information about the restaurant brand. Specifically, the more the smiley logo for McDonald’s Happy Meal is seen, the stronger the association between the smiley and McDonald’s form in consumers’ minds. Subsequently when consumers see smiley faces within other restaurant logos, they will automatically associate that brand with McDonald’s as well as other encoded characteristics of McDonald’s (e.g. unhealthy, cheap). Therefore, if a smile within a logo is closely linked to McDonald’s, we expect the presence of a smiley face in another restaurant logo will decrease both healthfulness and price perceptions of the product offerings as a result of that connection. A set of four lab experiments and a field experiment in a middle school examine how restaurant logos with smiley faces (versus no smileys) influence perceptions of healthfulness and price. We find that restaurant logos that include smileys are perceived as lower in healthfulness, which in turn leads to lower price perceptions. Additionally, this effect is triggered by an association with a fast-food restaurant category.