Crossmodal Perception in Product Packaging

Crossmodal perception in product packaging explores how visual, tactile and other design cues interact to shape consumers’ sensory expectations and product evaluations. Packaging elements such as shape, colour, transparency and graphical motifs can elicit anticipatory taste, texture or flavour associations by engaging multisensory integration processes. These crossmodal correspondences arise through a combination of perceptual learning, affective mediation of hedonic valence and cultural or semantic conventions. The field examines how manufacturers can harness these interactions to communicate product attributes, enhance brand differentiation and influence purchase behaviour. Research highlights that rounded forms tend to evoke sweetness while angular shapes connote bitterness or sourness, and that colour brightness, saturation and spatial positioning further modulate these taste expectations. Understanding these effects holds global significance for sustainable marketing, health communication and sensory branding across food, beverage and consumer goods industries.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Research from all publishers

Recent studies have shown how combinations of packaging shape and colour can precisely signal product taste. One investigation into cheese packaging demonstrated that round shapes with high brightness and low saturation convey mild flavours, whereas angular designs with deeper, more saturated hues suggest sharper tastes. This dual‐cue approach also enhanced liking when visual and gustatory expectations aligned. Another line of work has explored how transparent packaging influences green purchasing decisions among tourists. Clarity on organic food packages was found to heighten ecological concern and nature connectedness, thereby boosting environmentally friendly buying intentions. A further experimental review has elucidated the mechanisms underpinning shape–taste correspondences, revealing that curvature and symmetry engage emotional and metaphorical translation of taste qualities into spatial analogues. It also highlighted associative learning between packaging forms and branded taste experiences, suggesting that both innate perceptual tendencies and cultural exposures contribute to crossmodal effects.

Crossmodal Perception in Product Packaging publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in crossmodal perception in product packaging across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Crossmodal correspondence: The systematic association between stimulus features in one sensory modality (e.g. shape) and perceived qualities in another (e.g. taste).

Sensory expectation: Anticipatory mental representation of a product’s sensory attributes triggered by external cues.

Visual metaphor: A graphical element that symbolically conveys product attributes by drawing on familiar associations.

Hedonic valence: The positive or negative affective quality assigned to stimuli based on perceived pleasantness.

References

1. The impact of transparent packaging: how transparent packaging for organic foods affects tourists' green purchasing behavior. Frontiers in Nutrition (2024).
2. Signalling taste through packaging: The effects of shape and colour on consumers’ perceptions of cheeses. Food Quality and Preference (2023).
3. The sweetest thing: the influence of angularity, symmetry, and the number of elements on shape-valence and shape-taste matches. Frontiers in Psychology (2015).
4. Explaining Visual Shape–Taste Crossmodal Correspondences. Multisensory Research (2023).
5. Visual Design Cues Impacting Food Choice: A Review and Future Research Agenda. Foods (2020).