Unconscious and Conscious Aspects of Healthy Food Consumption: A Neuromarketing and Artificial Intelligence Approach

Consumers’ unconscious perception of packaging is essential, especially regarding food products where people usually have to choose among relatively similar products. In addition, this perception can be affected by the opinions of other users published on social networks. Researchers must set new goals to better understand user behavior through the information they have at their fingertips, and which influences them. The application of neuromarketing and artificial intelligence techniques to packaging has recently gained considerable popularity both, in academia and practice. With the combination of these methodologies, this study explores how people process and communicate healthy food products, and how people’s thoughts and behaviors are informative to other users when it comes to understanding their consumption patterns. Two studies have been carried out. The first one with an eye-tracking technique, in which the attention of 20 participants has been analyzed through first fixation and fixation duration metrics. The second study is based on 448 comments from users who have posted on the social network Instagram. The results obtained show, on the one hand, that healthy statements in food packaging attract unconscious attention, and on the other hand, that healthy claims on food packaging are not enough to achieve consumer satisfaction after purchasing the products. Our study is one of the first to analyze how people perceive unconsciously and consciously healthy products, and how they talk after trying them.