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Study finds saturation in images is key to marketing menu items

The food in the more highly saturated photos looked fresher and tastier to participants, and that led them to be more likely to purchase the food.

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An appealing photo of a pizza or other menu item can help a restaurant increase sales – especially if the right filter is used, a new study suggests. This is because photos high in color saturation make food look fresher and tastier to viewers, which increases their willingness to order the menu items.

Color saturation refers to the intensity of the color in the image – the vividness and richness of the reds and greens and blues.

But how well color saturation works to make food appealing depends on the visual distance of the food in the photo – and even on whether consumers plan to dine alone or with others.

In the cutthroat restaurant business, these results provide a simple method to increase sales, said Stephanie Liu, lead author of the study and associate professor of hospitality management at The Ohio State University.

“On Instagram, it means using the ‘X-Pro II’ filter on your food photos rather than the ‘Earlybird’ filter,” Liu said. “It is not difficult and doesn’t cost a dime, so it is an easy win for restaurant marketers.”

The study was published in the Journal of Business Research.

The researchers did two online studies.

In one study, 267 participants were asked to imagine themselves browsing through options on an online food ordering platform. They were shown photos of a poke bowl, a Hawaiian dish featuring chunks of raw, marinated fish, vegetables and sauce over rice.  They were from a fictitious restaurant named Poke Kitchen.

Study participants were randomly assigned to view one of the four different photos with either high or low color saturation and either close or farther away visual distance.

The photos with high color saturation were edited with professional graphic design software to be 130% more saturated than the low-saturation photos. The up-close photos were 130% larger in radius and appeared nearer to the observer than the more distant photo.

Participants were asked to rate how fresh the food in each photo looked, how tasty it looked and how likely they would be to purchase it.

The food in the more highly saturated photos looked fresher and tastier to participants, and that led them to be more likely to purchase the food, results showed.

But color saturation had a stronger effect when the food appeared more distant in the photos, Liu said. “When the food is shown close up, it is already easy for the viewers to imagine how fresh and tasty the food would be,” she said. “Color saturation is not as necessary.”

The second study involved 222 online participants.  In this case, the participants were asked to imagine they were browsing Instagram and came across images of pizza from a fictitious restaurant near their home named Pizza City. They were shown photos either high or low in color saturation.

People in the study were also told they would either be eating alone or with family that night and were again asked to rate the pizza on perceived freshness and tastiness and on whether they would likely purchase the menu item.

As in the previous study, the food in the color-saturated photo was always seen as fresher and tastier and one that people would be more likely to buy.  But that effect was stronger for people who were told they would be eating alone and weaker for those who would be eating with family.

“When people are eating with others, the social experience is a big part of what people look forward to,” Liu said. “But when they anticipate eating alone, they focus more on the food itself. They want the food to be fresher and tastier and that’s why color saturation is more important in this context.”

These findings are more important now than ever before, with people ordering online and looking at photos to help them decide what to eat, Liu said.

“Restaurants have to post pictures of their food on social media and online ordering platforms,” she said. “They should be paying as much attention, or maybe more, to the photos they post as they do to the text. Color saturation is one key element they need to focus on.”

Co-authors on the study were Laurie Luorong Wu of Temple University, Xi Yu of the City University of Macau and Huiling Huang of the University of Macau in China. Xi Yu and Huiling Huang are recent doctoral graduates of the hospitality management program at Ohio State.

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Prime Asia Hotel thrives through technology, shared values

“Our model is to always adapt and to listen to our guests, to see their requirements in order to adjust accordingly and improve our facilities,” said Prime Asia Hotel General Manager Walid El Zeer.

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In the dynamic sphere of hospitality, Prime Asia Hotel (PAH) has carved a niche that was built on unwavering values and confidence in technology.

At the heart of its success, there is relentless dedication to offer guests a memorable stay, making use of innovative tools, coupled with a commitment to the company values: Pleasantness, Attentiveness, and Honesty.

“Our model is to always adapt and to listen to our guests, to see their requirements in order to adjust accordingly and improve our facilities,” said Prime Asia Hotel General Manager Walid El Zeer.

Making good on this promise, the hotel opened its doors to furparents who would like to bring their small pets with them. The hotel is also working to improve their facilities to soon accommodate even bigger breeds. 

Aside from that, the hotel also offers a 24-hour access to its swimming pool, a menu specially-made for kids, spa, and massage services, budget-friendly offerings, a 24/7 coffee shop, as well as diverse culinary options perfect for leisure, business, and family travelers.

“A satisfying aspect for us is providing a safe and friendly environment for families and kids, to see them happy, and enjoying their time in the hotel. It’s touching when you see them sad to leave, wanting to come back or to stay more. It gives us happiness that we are able to achieve something that is good for these families,” El Zeer noted. 

In a business where every second counts, technology’s ability to eliminate bureaucratic roadblocks and enable real-time decision-making has been a game-changer for Prime Asia Hotel. 

They harness technology to optimize operations, freeing up staff from tedious chores so they can concentrate on creating meaningful guest interactions. This helps them foster an environment where the team can thrive and guests feel truly valued.

Converge ICT Solutions Inc., their technology provider, plays a crucial role in this evolution by offering up-to-date solutions that complement the hotel’s aspirations.

Their subscription to business-grade fiber of Converge, flexiBIZ, sees to it that the connectivity remains fast and reliable, meeting the speed and consistency that travelers require.

“Today, even if you give the cleanest room, cook the best food, give the best service, the nicest smile and you are not providing a good reliable Wi-Fi connection, the guest will not be happy. Now we are on FlexiBiz. It’s it’s very efficient, budget friendly and reliable solution,” El Zeer said.

“Sometimes the guests have two or three gadgets in the same room, but we are not receiving any complaints about it. It’s still working very well and very reliable,” he added. 

Beyond technology, Prime Asia’s success is nurtured by the core values it stands up for. Having their values at the core of their hiring decisions, they make sure that every staff member is motivated by a shared vision and goal.

For El Zeer, skills can be developed, but values are innate. Combining this with necessary skills, the hotel is positioned to create a synergy that sets them for exceptional service.

Undoubtedly, Prime Asia Hotel’s future holds immense promise. As Prime Asia Hotel continues to stride forward, its commitment to guest-centricity and innovation remains unshaken. 

With this dedication, Prime Asia Hotel guarantees that each visitor leaves with treasured memories, a sense of belonging, and a promise to return.

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Better or different? How brand differentiation affects pay and profits

High-quality brands taking advantage of brand cachet to pay employees less erodes profits due to negative effects on employee productivity and retention. More unique brands which tend to pay more, on the other hand, yield a net positive effect on profits due to positive effects on the same employee behaviors.

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New research finds brands that leverage a reputation for quality to pay employees less risk eroding profits.

The paper, published in the Journal of Marketing Research and authored by researchers from Duke University, London Business School and Texas A&M University, shows that vertical brand differentiation (being perceived as better) is associated with lower pay, whereas horizontal brand differentiation (being perceived as different) is associated with higher pay.

High-quality brands taking advantage of brand cachet to pay employees less erodes profits due to negative effects on employee productivity and retention. More unique brands which tend to pay more, on the other hand, yield a net positive effect on profits due to positive effects on the same employee behaviors.

“High-end brands, which are known for their quality and heritage of excellence, find it easier to attract employees who want the résumé boost of working for a well-known brand,” said Christine Moorman, Professor of Business Administration at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. “Experiments undertaken during our study show that Human Resource managers believe, and employees agree that, on average, they will accept lower pay for such benefits.”

“More unique, lesser-known brands don’t have the same résumé cachet,” Moorman said. “Managers believe, and job candidates agree, that they require higher pay to work for these unique brands as such employment does not convey the same résumé power in securing future jobs.”  

Critically, these differential brand-pay relationships have important downstream effects on employee behavior and, consequently, on firms’ profits.

Nader Tavassoli, Professor of Marking at London Business School explained: “Taking advantage of high-quality brand cachet to lower pay represents a false economy because profits are diminished by negative effects on employee productivity and retention. Pay dissatisfaction can lead to people working less hard or leaving, ultimately costing companies money. Managers should, therefore, rely on brand reputation to attract talent, but not leverage it to suppress pay.”

“Higher pay can be motivating as employees exert extra effort, thereby driving up productivity and profits,” added Alina Sorescu, Professor of Marketing at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University.

“As Henry Ford once said, ‘Paying good wages is not charity at all, it is the best kind of business,'” Sorescu said. “This is borne out by our findings, which show that when managers at more unique firms pay more, profits increase.”

Given these dynamics, the researchers recommend that managers should consider brand differentiation in their pay benchmarking:

  • Consider your brand in setting pay, as your brand’s perceived quality and uniqueness have opposing pressures on employee pay.
  • Leverage your brand’s perceived quality to attract talent but not to pay less, as this results in a net profit loss due to negative effects on employee productivity and retention.
  • Take a benign view of paying employees more based on your brand’s perceived uniqueness, as this results in a net profit gain due to positive effects on employee productivity and retention.
  • Adjust your competitive pay benchmarking based on relative levels of both vertical and horizontal brand differentiation.
  • Have marketing and HR work together to compete effectively in the war for the “right” talent.

“Brands in the Labor Market: How Vertical and Horizontal Brand Differentiation Impact Pay and Profits Through Employee-Brand Matching” by Christine Moorman, Alina Sorescu and Nader T. Tavassoli appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research.

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Nudging food delivery customers to skip fork drastically cuts plastic waste – study

As food delivery services became increasingly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, the surge in plastic waste generated by single-use cutlery has become a key environmental challenge for many countries.

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In 2021, more than 400 million metric tons of plastic waste were produced worldwide, and it is predicted that the world’s plastic waste growth will continue to outpace the efforts to reduce plastic pollution in the coming decades. As food delivery services became increasingly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, the surge in plastic waste generated by single-use cutlery has become a key environmental challenge for many countries.

A new study finds “green nudges” that encouraged customers to skip asking for cutlery with their delivery orders were dramatically successful and could be a powerful policy tool to reduce plastic waste.

“Few policies target plastic waste production at the consumer level, except charges on plastic bags,” says EPIC-China’s research director Guojun He, an author of the study and an Associate Professor at the Hong Kong University Business School. “Our findings show that simple nudges can make a big difference in changing consumers’ behaviors and could become a tool for policymakers as they confront the immense challenge of plastic waste.”

Reducing single-use cutlery waste in the food-delivery industry is particularly important in China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of single-use cutlery. As of 2019, more than 540 million Chinese were active users of food-delivery services and each day consumed more than 50 million sets of single-use cutlery that were not adequately treated or disposed of. To reduce single-use cutlery consumption, policy-makers in China set a target of reducing its usage in food deliveries by 30 percent by 2025.

Guojun He and his co-authors Yuhang Pan, Albert Park, Yasuyuki Sawada and Elaine Tan worked with Alibaba’s online food-ordering platform Eleme. Eleme is China’s second largest food-delivery company, similar to Uber Eats and DoorDash, with more than 753 million users in 2022. The researchers evaluated the effectiveness of Alibaba’s green nudges to reduce single-use cutlery consumption. These nudges included changing the default selection to “no cutlery” and including green points as rewards for not using the cutlery. When a customer accumulated enough green points, they could then be redeemed to plant a tree under the customer’s name.

The researchers studied each user’s monthly food-ordering history for two years through 2019-2020 in 10 major Chinese cities. These included the three treated cities with green nudges (i.e., Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin) and the seven control cities without the nudges (Qingdao, Xi’an, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Chengdu). Among these cities, the authors randomly sampled about 200,000 active users (i.e., those who placed at least one order between 2019 and 2020).

The authors found that the green nudges—changing the default to “no cutlery” and rewarding consumers with green points—increased the share of no-cutlery orders by 648 percent. If green nudges were applied to all of China, they discovered that more than 21.75 billion sets of single-use cutlery would be saved annually—eliminating 3.26 million metric tons of plastic waste and saving 5.44 million trees (from wooden chopsticks) each year.

“Other food delivery platforms, such as UberEats and DoorDash, could try similar nudges to reduce cutlery consumption and plastic waste globally,” says He.

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