Appetite xxx (2016) 1e2

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Appetite
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet

How food marketers can sell smaller portions: Consumer insights

and product innovation
a b s t r a c t
Keywords:
Portion size
Consumer
Decision making
Product
Marketing

Food portion size has been shown to be an important driver of energy intake. Despite the well
acknowledged role of portion control in weight management, large portion sizes remain ubiquitous in
the marketplace. Moving consumers towards consumption of smaller portion sizes will require changes
in consumer behavior as well as changes in products available to consumers in a variety of settings. This
special supplement presents cutting edge research aimed at understanding consumer behavior around
portion size and innovations in product design that may promote the selection and consumption of
smaller portion sizes. We identify further research that will be needed to translate basic behavioral
ndings into real world settings and to viable product development.
2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
For a long time, smaller food portion sizes have been recognized
as one of the key tools in weight management and obesity prevention (Berg & Forslund, 2015; Livingstone & Pourshahidi, 2014). In
the last 10 years, a better understanding of consumers portion
choices has emerged (Schwartz, Riis, Elbel, & Ariely, 2012;
Wansink, 2010). While some new products have made it easier
for consumers to choose smaller portions (100 calorie packs,
smaller plates), the need and opportunity for innovation remains
strong. In this special issue, four articles reveal some promising opportunities for insight and innovation.
2. Consumer values and consumption patterns around
smaller portion sizes
Rucker and He (2016) discuss the roll of mindset in portion control. Psychological mindsets are means by which we think about
and analyze our social world that can be chronic or induced by situational factors. One of the key insights presented in this paper is
that a low status mindset (i.e., feeling that one is low in power
within a social group) can lead consumers to strive for status
through consumption of larger portions of food. Support for links
between consumer mindset and portion size have thus far come
from lab studies. Rucker and He note that the potential to shift consumer behaviors around portion size remain to be tested in actual
market conditions. Research needs include understanding of the
food quality, packaging, and marketing parameters that could be
leveraged to enhance the status of selecting smaller food and
beverage portions. An alternative approach is to understand how
to make consumers resistant to situational low power mindsets

at the time of purchase and consumption. Such strategies may be

particularly important for segments of the population that may
be at elevated risk of obesity as well as low power mindsets. Inuencing mindsets through advertisements and point-of-sale displays would be a particularly promising eld-based application of
the ndings reported here.
Lin, Wood, and Monterosso (in press) offer new insights about
the role of consumer habits. Eating habits form when people
repeatedly eat the same food in a given context and an initially
deliberative, conscious behavior becomes automatically triggered
by context through associative conditioning processes. Their work
shows that eating habits can have strong inuence on behavior
and are elicited by context-specic cues surrounding eating
including location, time of day, and people. Specically, they report
results from two new studies in which some consumers were
trained (using a novel laboratory method) to form a healthy habit.
One particularly promising nding was that these trained consumers demonstrated heightened portion control in the face of
temptation. As the authors note, the advantage of habit-based approaches to behavior change is that habits rely on consumers automatic processes, rather than on the more demanding deliberative
processes of careful decision making (Kahneman, 2011). As with
the studies of Rucker and He, these studies represent promising opportunities for the development and testing of eld-based habit
training programs. This work suggests the need for research to understand how habitual cues around large portions can be removed.
Research is also needed to understand the cues that may be most
effective for activating habits around smaller portion sizes,
including how often smaller portions must be consumed to establish habits. Promoting healthy portion size habits will also require
understanding of the environmental conditions that provide

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.03.016
0195-6663/ 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Please cite this article in press as: Riis, J., et al.How food marketers can sell smaller portions: Consumer insights and product innovation, Appetite (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.03.016

J. Riis et al. / Appetite xxx (2016) 1e2

sufcient structure and reinforcement to maintain associative conditioning and protect against recidivism when challenged.
3. Product variation and design
Haws and Liu (in press) present a simple but potentially useful
product innovation that contrasts perceived vice and virtue of
food combinations to promote healthy portion sizes. Vice-virtue
bundles allow consumers to enjoy the energy-dense foods that
they often crave (i.e. vice), but in small portions, combined with
healthier, less energy-dense foods (i.e. virtue). They argue that
goals for taste prioritize the presence but not the quantity of vice
foods, whereas goals for health prioritize the quantity of virtue
foods present. Variations of such bundles already exist, of course,
in many international cuisines, but the concept could be more
widely applied in weight management research and practice.
Haws and Liu describe numerous positive consumer reactions to
vice-virtue bundles. For example, the mere presence of a small
portion of a vice food can dramatically increase the expected taste
rating of a vice-virtue bundle (compared to a virtue-only offering).
Ongoing research needs include a better understanding of consumers perceptions and choices when offered a full range of
vice-virtue bundles in naturalistic settings. Vice-virtue bundles,
for instance, can be surprisingly hard to nd on casual dining and
quick-serve menus. Whether vice/virtue bundles could be
extended to packaged goods is also an important empirical question. Effective translation of research to product innovation will
require understanding of the extent to which bundling effects are
inuenced by price, particularly for low-income consumers
(Steenhuis, Waterlander, & de Mul, 2011).
Ordabayeva and Chandon (in press) discuss a number of types of
biases that inuence portion size estimation and present product
innovation opportunities related to packaging. They argue that consumers focus on perceived healthfulness of foods without much
attention to quantity. They review a stream of research showing
that consumers systematically underestimate larger portion sizes.
As portion sizes have grown in casual dining and quick serve meals
this underestimation is particularly problematic (Briefel & Johnson,
2004; Young & Nestle, 2007). Ordabayeva and Chandon show that
consumers are more likely to underestimate portion size when
packaging size changes in more than one dimension. Some packages, particularly those with elongated shapes, appear to be less
susceptible to consumer underestimation, making it easier for consumers to control their portions. The research in this area suggests
the need for additional inquiry to identify characteristics of packaging that promote both accurate portion size estimation (e.g.
transparent packaging) or alternatively facilitate the selection of
smaller portion sizes (e.g. segmented containers).
Together, the basic behavioral research here shows some promising paths for food marketers, food researchers, and weight loss
practitioners. Mastery of portion size is a nuanced skill for consumers, involving numerous psychological processes including
those examined in this special issue: mindset, habit, choice, and
perception. A detailed understanding of portion size psychology
will help marketers provide the kinds of consumption experiences
that facilitate effective portion control.
Many other broad questions will impact product innovation and
adoption. Some of these are touched on in the current research;
others remain open questions. For example:
1) To what extent can portion innovations be stealth, and unnoticed by the consumer, and to what extent must innovations
survive close consumer attention?

2) How will trends toward product customization impact portion

innovation opportunities?
3) Are different innovations needed for meals than for snacks, and
can one type of consumption situation be successfully managed
without attention to the other?
4) Which technologies will provide the most useful product innovations (ranging from old technologies, like frozen food, to
newer ones like real-time tracking)?
Realistic solutions will need to address potential threats to profitability including increased costs of product development and
operational complexity, as well as decreased revenue that may
result from lower prices of smaller units and reduced consumer demand. Social missions, however, are important to many large companies and may thereby justify the investment and risk required to
support innovation. In this sense, the long term health of the food
industryein addition to the health of consumersedepends on successful portion size innovation.

References
Berg, C., & Forslund, H. B. (2015). The inuence of portion size and timing of meals
on weight balance and obesity. Current Obesity Reports, 4(1), 11e18.
Briefel, R. R., & Johnson, C. L. (2004). Secular trends in dietary intake in the United
States. Annual Review of Nutrition, 24, 401e431.
Kahneman, D. B. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow New York. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux.
Kelly, L. Haws, & Peggy, J. Liu (2016). Combining food type(s) and food quantity
choice in a new food choice paradigm based on vice-virtue bundles. Appetite
(in press). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.11.012.
Livingstone, M. B., & Pourshahidi, L. K. (2014). Portion size and obesity. Advances in
Nutrition, 5(6), 829e834.
Rucker, D. D., & He, S. (2016). Psychological mindsets affect consumption: how
different mindsets help (hurt) portion control. Appetite. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.appet.2016.01.005 (Epub ahead of print). pii: S0195-6663(16)30005-8.
Ordabayeva, N., & Chandon, P. (2016). In the eye of the beholder: visual biases in
package and portion size perceptions. Appetite (in press). http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.appet.2015.10.014.
Lin, P.-Y., Wood, W., & Monterosso, J. (2016). Healthy eating habits protect against
temptations. Appetite (in press). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.11.011.
Schwartz, J., Riis, J., Elbel, B., & Ariely, D. (2012). Inviting consumers to downsize
fast-food portions signicantly reduces calorie consumption. Health Affairs
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Steenhuis, I. H., Waterlander, W. E., & de Mul, A. (2011). Consumer food choices: the
role of price and pricing strategies. Public Health Nutrition, 14(12), 2220e2226.
Wansink, B. (2010). From mindless eating to mindlessly eating better. Physiology &
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Young, L. R., & Nestle, M. (2007). Portion sizes and obesity: responses of fast-food
companies. Journal of Public Health Policy, 28(2), 238e248.

J. Riis*
The Warton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA
J.O. Fisher
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Center for Obesity
Research and Education, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
S. Rowe
SR Strategy, Washington, D.C., USA
Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Boston, MA,
USA
*
Corresponding author. The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania, Jon M. Huntsman Hall, 7th Floor, 3730 Walnut Street,
Philadelphia, 19104-6340, PA, USA.
E-mail address: jriis@wharton.upenn.edu (J. Riis).

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Please cite this article in press as: Riis, J., et al.How food marketers can sell smaller portions: Consumer insights and product innovation, Appetite (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.03.016