You may have seen these weapons in action Naughty grandma A look from the department store Robot vacuum cleaneror decorate a statue University campusBut moving eyes, the cartoon-like eyeballs you often see in arts and crafts projects, aren’t just good for making people smile: If used right, just ask researcher Casey Kim, the sticky little eyes could be a clever tactic to influence consumers — specifically, to get them to buy fruits and vegetables that might otherwise end up in food waste.
Kim, an associate professor at Bryant University, recently published study A study published in the journal Psychology and Marketing found that when pictures of misshapen vegetables are shown with moving eyes, or when human names are used to describe oddly shaped fruits, consumers are more likely to buy “ugly” produce.
Inspired by a past marketing campaign that tried to anthropomorphize imperfect produce, the team spent six years formulating the case that making irregular produce seem more human could boost sales.
“Can we think of non-human produce as human? With googly eyes,” Kim says. “Making ‘ugly’ produce more appealing will ultimately reduce waste.”
Billions of pounds of food are wasted across the nation every year. Much of that is due to overbuying and strict regulations on food donations, but at least Part of the problem American consumers are more likely to reject fruits and vegetables that are too small, misshapen, discolored or visually blemished. Some estimates put it at as much as 20 percent of production. Because of their cosmetic defects, they end up in landfills and incinerators. Percentage due to consumer rejection of foods that are “suboptimal” in appearance.
Despite a recent spate of companies trying to profit from the problem of “ugly” produce leading to food waste, consumer tastes have not changed much, especially in mainstream supermarkets. And About 40 percent Half of all fruit and vegetable harvests are deemed “imperfect” by wholesalers and retailers, leading to huge emissions from food loss and waste. Consumer Preferences: when Given a choiceHowever, people still tend to prefer items that they perceive as perfect in appearance over imperfect items.
Kim’s team argues that the problem is that supermarkets, and even the “ugly” food companies, are doing it wrong: instead of discounting irregular produce to get people to buy it, the problem is making the produce so attractive that it doesn’t need to be discounted in the first place. That’s where the moving eye comes in.
“By testing and adding human traits, we see whether our efforts will make the produce more appealing, [whether] That attraction will lead to increased purchases and consumption of agricultural products,” Kim said.
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In the first experiment, the researchers added visual cues like googly eyes to irregular-looking eggplants, and showed participants pictures of normal or abnormal eggplants with or without googly eyes. In the second study, they gave the imperfect fruits gender-neutral human names — for example, “Taylor” for a lemon with four tails and “Jordan” for a strawberry with three heads. In both cases, they found that the majority of people were attracted to the imperfect produce and were more willing to buy the anthropomorphized versions.
This is all due to the way the human mind is programmed to see the world, explained study co-author Sukki Yoon, a professor at Bryant University. “We unconsciously process things the way we’re told. ‘An apple should look like this’ is a human bias. What’s more, it’s a form of stereotyping,” Yoon said.
Popular “ugly” produce companies (Yun pointed to Misfits Market as an example) are structured to discount the imperfect produce they sell, but this treads into problematic territory, he said, because lowering the price of such products tells consumers that a traditionally imperfect celery stalk is less valuable than a perfect-looking one. “What they’re doing is saying, ‘Oh, we’ll give you a discount. You can get more, but it’s ugly. Accept that and live with it.'” No, maybe you don’t need that trade-off in the first place. [foods] “As individuals, maybe with personality,” he said.
In fact, this is a contradiction Past research By selling such products at a discount to make up for the defects, Consumer quality perception.
The researchers also found that the perception of origin of imperfect produce matters. Participants were shown a video of human hands packing tomatoes into boxes (which they explained was filmed at a small local farm that supplies fresh vegetables to grocery stores), or a clip of robotic hands packing produce for an agricultural company that was presented as a high-tech operation with national distribution. Anthropomorphizing imperfect produce that was supposedly sourced from a local farm turned out to have little impact; consumers were already more likely to buy irregular-looking fruits and vegetables if they knew they came from a small local farm.
“If you go to a farmer’s market and buy five apples, you expect those five apples to look different. But if you go to a large grocery chain and pick five apples, you might want to pick five that look similar,” Yoon says.
Personifying imperfect fruits and vegetables As shown In the past, this has led to consumers changing their willingness to purchase such produce. In 2014, “grotesque apples” and “Silly Potato” was promoted in an advertising campaign led by a French supermarket chain that sold produce at discount prices. The following year, “Inner beauty” was launched as a UK campaign to promote the idea that taste and nutrition take precedence over appearance when it comes to low-cost products. In 2016, a major US supermarket chain launched “Create a unique piece” campaign aimed at discount shoppers in Pittsburgh.
Kim and Yoon’s new research highlights that retailers can use simpler marketing strategies, such as googly-eyed eggplant, to increase consumer demand for irregular-looking produce and reduce emissions associated with food waste, without drastically lowering prices.
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Libby Christensen, a food and agriculture expert at Colorado State University Extension, praises the idea. But she questions whether it’s possible to find such a direct connection between increased sales of irregular produce and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Christensen points out that the study doesn’t take into account the emissions associated with produce moving through the supply chain, nor does it take into account that some produce may be considered “ugly” in appearance, but that doesn’t necessarily affect the product’s integrity.
“Understanding the difference between waste on farms and waste at grocery stores is incredibly complicated, and the article doesn’t consider the potential unintended consequences of shifting waste locations,” Christensen said. (When asked, both Kim and Yoon were unable to quantify how much of a difference their strategy would actually make to food waste emissions, a problem that has plagued the broader “ugly” produce industry.)
Christensen said her research into food loss and waste, particularly the repurposing of “ugly” produce, The life cycle emissions of such a systemAnd we will at least try to quantify the impact of this kind of intervention on the climate.
Moreover, asking literally every supermarket to put moving eyes on irregular produce may not be realistic, and would generate significant waste in itself. This isn’t something Kim’s team is really proposing; they’re thinking about marketing campaigns and advertising. But while putting moving eyes on minuscule tomatoes is unlikely to fundamentally change historically entrenched consumer habits, and naming a lumpy carrot “Alex” is unlikely to tip the trajectory of U.S. emissions from food waste, such a campaign could lead to small changes in the way consumers think about what they buy and eat. That in itself might be a win.
“Personally, I was really scared of eating eggplant. Whether it was ugly or beautiful, I would never [it]”But after doing this research, I’ve started buying eggplants. If they have bulging eyes, I’ll happily pick them up,” Kim says.
