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. 2022 Mar 21:16:844027.
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.844027. eCollection 2022.

How Are Consumers Affected by Taste and Hygiene Ratings When Ordering Food Online? A Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Study

Cuicui Wang  1   2 , Yun Li  1 , Xuan Luo  1   2 , Huijian Fu  3 , Ziqi Ye  1 , Guangwei Deng  1   2
Affiliations

How Are Consumers Affected by Taste and Hygiene Ratings When Ordering Food Online? A Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Study

Cuicui Wang et al. Front Neurosci. .

Abstract

With the rapid development of the take-out industry, taste and hygiene ratings as social-based information have been frequently used by online food-ordering platforms to facilitate consumer purchases. The present study aims to uncover the effects of taste and hygiene ratings on online food-ordering decision by incorporating behavioral and neural approaches. The behavioral results showed that a high taste rating induced a higher ordering intention than a low taste rating, and that a high hygiene rating induced a higher ordering intention than a low hygiene rating. The effect of hygiene rating on ordering intention was moderated by taste rating. Hygiene rating had a greater impact on ordering intention when the taste rating was high (vs. low). In addition, inconsistency between taste and hygiene ratings increased the cognitive load and took more time for decision-making. The event-related potential (ERP) data revealed that consumers paid more attention to a high (vs. low) taste rating in the early cognitive process, which was reflected by a larger P2. Subsequently, a more negative N2 was elicited by conflicting ratings than consistent ratings when the taste rating was low. In the relatively late decision-making process, a larger P3 was evoked by consistent than conflicting ratings, suggesting that consumers had more confidence in their decisions for consistent ratings. These findings could help restaurants understand the roles of taste and hygiene rating cues in affecting consumer behavior and prompt those restaurants to adopt effective measures to increase online sales.

Keywords: cue diagnosticity theory; event-related potentials; food; hygiene rating; taste rating.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Ordering intention results in Study 1. (A) Bar graph. (B) Linear graph. ***p < 0.001, ns p > 0.05.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Schematic illustration of one trial in the experimental task of Study 2. Participants were instructed to make a “choose” or “not choose” decision after the presentation of S2 along with taste and hygiene rating information.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Ordering rate results in Study 2. (A) The ordering rates organized according to one factor (taste rating or hygiene rating). (B) The ordering rates for all four experimental conditions. The error bars indicate standard error of the mean. **p < 0.01 and ***p < 0.001.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Reaction time (RT) results for all experimental conditions in Study 2. The error bars indicate standard error of the mean. ***p < 0.001.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Event-related potential (ERP) results in Study 2. Grand-average ERP waveforms of the frontal, fronto-central, and central regions recorded from the FCz, Cz, CPz, and Pz electrodes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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