Matte Packaging and its Effect on Perceived Naturalness of a Product

Two experiments show that consumers use package matted-ness as a cue for product naturalness. Package-induced perceptions of product naturalness, in turn, increase expected tastiness and pur-chase intentions. The effect is moderated by inherent product cate-gory naturalness such that the effect is especially pronounced among products low in inherent naturalnessA package’s surface is its exterior boundary (Merriam-Webster Online, 2017) and hence one of the first features consumers come into contact with. One major trend in the field of packaging is the use of matte, i.e. dull or lusterless, as opposed to glossy surfaces. We aim to shed light on why this trend may arise at a time at which natural products and ingredients seem to experience a renaissance (Bezawada & Pauwels, 2013).The theoretical lens we apply is the lens of packaging as an external cue for the product itself (Richardson, Dick, & Jain, 1994). Especially when consumers cannot or do not want to gather infor-mation about a product (e.g. in the case of groceries), they tend to rely on external cues that are more easily accessible and require less processing than internal cues such as ingredients (Richardson et al., 1994).