The psychological environment: menu design psychology

Psychology A2 · Consumer Psychology. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

A menu is a selling tool. Good design makes chosen dishes stand out; poor design hides them. Pavesic (2005) argued that diners read a menu only briefly, so designers should use eye magnets such as boxes, pictures, colour or larger type to pull attention to high-profit dishes. Common faults are too many items, small type and prices lined up in a column so that diners choose by price.

Eye-tracking records where people look on a menu and for how long. It shows attention, not choice.

Two more effects matter. Position: items at the start or end of a list are chosen more (primacy and recency). Food name: descriptive names make a dish more appealing.

Rules to remember

Primacy = better memory or preference for the first items; recency = for the last items.
Dayan and Bar-Hillel (2011): a menu-choice experiment with students and a field experiment in a real café in Israel, with the order of items changed.
Dayan and Bar-Hillel result: items placed at the beginning or end of their category were chosen more than the same items in the middle.
Lockyer (2006): focus groups and a survey in New Zealand comparing different wordings of the same menu.
Lockyer result: descriptive wording was preferred; words that suggested freshness and quality appealed.
Sales figures are objective data; ratings of how appetising a dish sounds are subjective data.
Field experiment in a restaurant: high ecological validity, weak control of customers, days and weather.

Common mistake

Thinking only the first item gains from position. Research found that both ends of a category list do better than the middle.

Worked example

A café lists six desserts. Its most profitable one, a lemon tart, is fourth and is simply called 'Lemon tart'. Suggest two changes based on research.

Dayan and Bar-Hillel (2011): items at the start or end of a category are chosen more.
So move the tart to first or last place in the dessert list.
Lockyer (2006): descriptive names raise appeal and expectations.
So rename it, for example 'Freshly baked lemon tart with crisp butter pastry'.

Answer: Move the tart to the top or bottom of the dessert list and give it a descriptive name.

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