Numbers in brand names make consumers expect tastier food

The inclusion of numbers in food and beverage brand names tends to make consumers expect the products will taste better and have more complex flavor profiles. A recent paper published in Psychology & Marketing suggests that writing numbers out as words, especially those containing certain vowel sounds, enhances this effect by subtly signaling richness and depth to the human brain.

Nathalie Spielmann and Diego Vega designed this research to explore how the format and sound of numbers in brand names influence consumer judgments about flavor. The way a brand name sounds and looks plays a major role in shaping initial impressions. In the food industry, numbers frequently appear in brand names, but the psychological effects of these numeric cues on actual taste expectations remain largely unexplored.

“Being very involved with wine, I noticed that many wine brands were opting for numericals when naming their wines and I wondered what influence that might have on consumer perceptions,” said Spielmann, a professor of marketing at NEOMA Business School. “Particularly as wine is an experiential product and rarely trialed before purchase, it seemed interesting to research what and how consumers might expect wines to taste based on the type of number being used in the brand. This research obviously applies to all foods and beverages.”

The researchers anchored their work in processing fluency theory, which describes how the ease or difficulty of understanding a piece of information affects human preferences. Usually, people prefer things that are easy to process. However, in certain contexts, a slight mental hurdle can make a product seem more elaborate or premium. This slight cognitive friction is known as disfluency.

Spielmann and Vega proposed that encountering numbers in a brand name introduces a mild form of visual and cognitive complexity. Because reading a spelled-out word like “seven” requires slightly more mental effort than reading the digit “7,” the brain might misattribute this slight difficulty to the product itself being complex and layered.

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“The takeaway is that consumers might be more influenced than they think when presented with a brand name that includes a numerical cue,” Spielmann said. “Not only does a number positively influence taste perceptions, but this is even more so the case when the number is written versus numerically presented. This occurs because numbers but also written numbers are more complex to read and thus cue complexity.”

The authors also wanted to test phonetic symbolism, which refers to how specific sounds evoke physical sensations or abstract concepts. Specifically, they wondered if front-vowel numbers and back-vowel numbers might cue different flavor expectations. Front vowels are sounds produced with the tongue positioned forward in the mouth, often associated with lightness or sharpness, as seen in words like three or six.

Back vowels involve pulling the tongue back, evoking a sense of richness, depth, or heaviness, as seen in words like one or two. Spielmann noted that “written numbers with back vowel sounds (when the mouth is more rounded, such as 1, 2, 4) amplify this effect, and make the product seem more complex and richer.”

To test these ideas, Spielmann and Vega carried out four separate studies, beginning with an Implicit Association Test. This first study recruited 149 North American participants to measure their automatic, subconscious associations between brand names and taste. The participants sorted words into categories on a computer screen, matching brand names that either contained numbers or did not with either taste-related words or neutral words.

The researchers measured response latencies, which track how quickly a participant can accurately sort the categories. The authors found that participants were significantly faster at categorizing items when brand names with numbers were paired with taste-related words. This outcome suggests that people harbor an underlying implicit belief that food brands featuring numbers are tastier than those without them.

In their second study, the researchers analyzed professional wine evaluations to see if this pattern held up in a natural setting. They collected 695 wine tasting notes from a popular international wine magazine over a twelve-month period, looking at 56 wines with numbers in their names and 639 without. They recorded the expert scores, which served as a proxy for taste and quality, and conducted a textual analysis of the written reviews.

Wines with numerical brand names received statistically higher expert scores, averaging 93.84 out of 100 compared to 93.15 for non-numerical brands. A deeper qualitative analysis of a balanced subset of 112 tasting notes revealed that reviewers used more abstract and complex language when describing numerical wines. This provides evidence that numerical branding is associated with more elaborate and structural tasting experiences.

The third study tested whether the visual format of the number matters. The researchers presented 306 North American participants with a fictional potato chip package. The participants were randomly assigned to view the brand name with no number, a number written as a digit, or a number spelled out as a word. They then rated their expectations of the chips’ taste and complexity on a seven-point scale.

The findings indicate that written numbers produced the highest taste expectations, scoring an average of 5.42 out of 7, compared to 4.85 for the non-numerical brand. The digit format scored in between. The statistical analysis showed that this increase in expected taste was directly linked to heightened perceptions of complexity.

For the final study, Spielmann and Vega scraped 1,032 consumer wine ratings from Vivino, an online marketplace and community platform. They specifically looked for wines featuring numbers in their names to evaluate the impact of phonetic sounds on consumer ratings. They categorized the numbers based on their starting sounds, grouping numbers like three, five, six, seven, eight, and nine as front vowels.

The researchers found that wines with back-vowel numbers received significantly higher consumer ratings than those with front-vowel numbers. This effect was heavily dependent on the presentation format. For numbers written out as words, back-vowel names performed significantly better than front-vowel names, scoring 3.91 out of 5 compared to 3.79.

For numbers presented as simple digits, the phonetic differences had no impact on consumer ratings. This suggests that reading the word aloud in the mind activates these specific sensory associations, while seeing a simple digit does not trigger the same phonetic depth.

“Additionally, and with my colleague Diego Vega, it was interesting to see that across methods, an implicit test, quantitative studies, and also from a descriptive and qualitative perspective… the effects were consistent,” Spielmann said. “Consumers, both novice and experts, do react differently to numerical brands.”

Brand managers could potentially leverage these findings to boost perceived flavor intensity without altering their actual recipes. For example, a company launching a rich dessert might choose a written back-vowel number to maximize sensory expectations. However, Spielmann observed that many food and beverage companies miss this opportunity.

“What seemed more surprising was not the results as much as the use of numericals in brand names that clearly do not consider this sort of effect,” Spielmann explained. “While marketers are very careful about selecting a brand name or icon, ensuring that it is adapted to the product, corporate positioning, company ethos, this does not seem to be the case for number choices.”

She pointed out a common disconnect in the wine industry. “For example, many rich, heavy, broad, oaked wine brand names seem to have front vowel names in numerical format, which would tend to cue lightness and less complexity,” Spielmann said.

Readers should avoid assuming that adding a number to any product will automatically guarantee market success. The current research focuses heavily on hedonic items, specifically potato chips and wine, which are consumed primarily for pleasure. Products bought for functional or health-related reasons might not benefit from these same phonetic or numerical cues, as different psychological mechanisms govern those choices.

Still, the patterns observed in the market hint at a strong underlying trend. “It should be noted that the research was done using real data from either reputable wine magazines or a global wine review platform, suggesting that the research is representative of a market phenomenon,” Spielmann noted. “Not that many brands use numericals but when they do, it is often brands that have market success (7up, Four Seasons, Penfolds 407, etc.), suggesting that numericals are a powerful brand cue when harnessed properly.”

The studies also relied entirely on English-speaking samples and Western food categories. Phonetic symbolism and numerical superstitions vary widely across different cultures and languages. “However, the focus here was on the English language and the assumption that the numerical brand names would be interpreted in English and pronounced in English,” Spielmann said. “While English is the most spoken language in the world, the research results are thus mostly applicable to those who can speak it.”

Future research could explore how these numerical cues affect actual consumption experiences during physical taste tests. Scientists might also investigate whether a person’s individual numeracy skills alter this effect, as consumers who are highly proficient with numbers might process these brand names differently. Testing a wider variety of product types, including healthy food options, could provide a more complete picture of how numerical branding influences dietary choices.

The study, “The Tasty Side of Numbers: How Vowel Type Influences Taste Perceptions for Numerical Brand Names,” was authored by Nathalie Spielmann and Diego Vega.