Abstract
More and more food and beverage companies utilize social media to promote high-energy, low-nutrient products. The question is whether descriptive social norm feedback, implemented as a social media poll-in combination with its visual features and people's own (past) behavior-reduce the intention to purchase such advertised products. In Study 1, the participants' (N = 227) past behavior was evaluated based on their responses to the differently worded poll question: "Do you believe that your diet is (un)healthy?" (yes/no). Poll results were displayed proportionally (e.g., on the left-with a smaller bar-representing 27% yes answers), and participant's answer was marked with coloring the appropriate bar part in gray. Participants then rated their purchase intentions for healthy and unhealthy food products. Participants following a healthy diet showed significantly higher purchase intentions for healthy products, especially when the minority feedback of 27% appeared on the left side. No such effect appeared for participants with an unhealthy diet. In subsequent studies, visual features such as proportionality and color were systematically removed, causing the pattern of results to change or disappear. Overall, it appears that when using descriptive social norms feedback, its visual features should not be neglected.