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Some kinds of foods, by producing an effect like addiction, may trigger overeating. This paper aims to investigate whether excessive chocolate consumption and hunger cause food addiction.

Food cravings questionnaire-trait-reduced (FCQ-T-r), food cravings questionnaire-state (FCQ-S) and eating attitude test-26 (EAT-26) scales were used. The relation between chocolate addiction, anthropometric measurements, demographic characteristics, eating behavior of the people were analyzed. The study was conducted on 864 individuals between 17 and 64 years old (men = 327, women = 537).

As the body mass index (BMI) of the individuals increased, chocolate craving, chocolate hunger, thought of eating chocolate, lack of control of chocolate increased. Also, significant correlations were determined with BMI, respectively, (r = 0.39; r = 0.32; r = 0.33; r = 0.29; p < 0.001). The lack of control overeating chocolate, craving for chocolate was found to be higher in female participants than in male participants. It was seen that craving for chocolate decreases (r = −0.17; p < 0.001) with increasing age; this was more apparent in male participants compared to female participants. Besides, significant correlation was found (r = 0.76, p < 0.05) between the EAT-26, the craving to eat chocolate in this study. It was seen that individual, who were excessively eager to consume chocolate, exhibited abnormal eating behavior (29.50 ± 12.09). This showed that there is a positive relation (r = 0.08, p < 0.001) between food addiction, eating attitude disorder.

Food craving increases the consumption of food, especially chocolate, sugar, with high carbohydrate content and energy. This can lead to overeating and being overweight.

This paper aims to explore the influence of four types of imagery stimuli (i.e. visual, olfactory, gustatory and auditory) on food craving intensity based on the Elaborated Intrusion theory and the central role of mental imagery in the food craving experience. The roles of overall perception of sensory imagery attributes and perceived availability in moderating this process were also tested. The aim is to extract the positive aspects of food cravings by increasing them and shifting them toward healthy foods.

In an online experiment, 314 participants were randomly primed with each imagery condition. After being exposed to either healthy or unhealthy food pictures, participants completed a questionnaire measuring their craving state, trait food craving, imaging ability, BMI, dietary restraint, hunger and mood. At the end, the impact of food craving intensity on marketing outcomes (i.e. willingness to pay, price sensitivity and food intake) were tested.

As predicted, visual imagery was found to be the strongest stimulus inducing food craving followed by olfactory, gustatory and auditory stimuli. Furthermore, the results indicate that perceived availability of food is the only important variable moderating this process. Additionally, the results show that hunger makes consumers more susceptible to food cravings than mood. Moreover, food craving intensity showed significant impact on the two marketing outcomes: willingness to pay and food intake.

First, the authors used a cheeseburger as unhealthy food and salad as healthy food, future studies can increase the generalizability of the findings by using other types of food. Second, physiological and psychological disorders should be considered and studied as influential factors on food cravings in future studies. Third, future studies should include some behavioral measures besides the analysis of state and trait craving. Fourth, although the main objective of this study was to compare the effect of different imagery stimuli on consumers’ food craving, there was no control (no-stimulus) condition.

Marketing strategists may benefit from the fact that encouraging consumers to visualize some specific type of food product along with informing them about its availability will elevate their craving for that food product. Hence, using this strategy in shopping environments could be beneficial. In the context of improving people’s diet, our results showed that encouraging people to visualize healthy foods (e.g. fruits and vegetables) might be more helpful than priming them with the benefits of eating healthy.

There has been a recent enthusiastic interest in identifying the role of food related mental imagery and stimuli in consumers’ decision making and their final consumption (Christian et al., 2016). Nevertheless, very few studies in marketing have paid attention to these underpinning stimuli driving food craving and the significant influence of this food craving phenomenon on marketing outcomes.

The purpose of this study was to examine hedonic hunger at the end of the Ramadan fasting.

Data were collected by the Power of Food Scale (PFS), Food Craving Questionnaire-Trait (FCQ-T) and the Visual Analogue Scale. All data were taken twice at the beginning and end of Ramadan fasting.

A total number of 105 volunteers (43.8% female and 56.2% male) participated in a cross-sectional study. Ramadan fasting associated with PFS food tasted sub-factor, whereas no association was found on PFS aggregate and other PFS domain factors. Participants had higher PFS food tasted domain score at the end of the Ramadan fasting than before Ramadan fasting (p < 0.001). Total FCQ-T score as well as all sub-domains did not differ significantly. Females desired to consume carbonated beverages more, whereas in male (p = 0.04), ice cream was the most craved food.

The findings of this study provide data to the literature about the relation between Ramadan fasting and hedonic hunger. Ramadan fasting appears to have an influence on pleasure at first bite. The effect of Ramadan fasting on hedonic hunger should be tested with larger samples and controlled trials.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been frequently proposed as a promising tool for learning. However, researchers have commonly implemented a plethora of design elements in these IVR systems, which makes the specific aspects of the system that are necessary to achieve beneficial outcomes unclear. Against this background, this study aims to combine the literature on presence with learning theories to propose that the ability of IVR to present 3D objects to users improves the presence of these objects in the virtual environment compared with 2D objects, leading to increased learning performance.

To test this study’s hypotheses, the authors conducted a 2 (training condition: approach vs avoid) x 2 (object presence: high vs low) between-subjects laboratory experiment that used IVR with 83 female participants.

The results support this study’s hypotheses and show that training with high object presence leads to greater reactions to cues (chocolate cravings) and improved health behaviour (chocolate consumption).

This study shows that increased object presence leads to unique experiences for users, which help reinforce training effects. Moreover, this work sheds further light on how immersive computer technologies can affect user attitudes and behaviour. Specifically, this work contributes to IVR research by showing that learning effects can be enhanced through an increased degree of object presence.

The purpose of this paper, a cross-cultural study, is twofold: first, to identify personal, social, demographical and marketing facets that imply fast food addiction in Pakistan and America, and second to explore the reasons of reduction in fast food consumption in Pakistan.

The present study followed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design. Both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods were used to obtain supportive results of fast food consumption with the help of defining logical relations between independent and dependent variables. Partial least square based structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze quantitative data. For qualitative data, NVivo 11 was used to explore themes.

Quantitative findings of Pakistani setting suggested that craving and impulsiveness have a significant relation with addiction and have no mediation effect in both the countries. However, these results contradict with US study. Qualitative findings explored many personal, social, marketing and health factors that have affected fast food market of Pakistan which include low income, price-sensitive market, low quality, poor services, PFA, word of mouth, mood, obesity, environment and cultural influence on the consumption behavior of Pakistani consumers.

This study is restricted to the consumption behavior of fast food only in two countries the USA and Pakistan. Hence, the results of this study cannot be generalized to other countries’ cultural and traditional values. In addition, this study only focuses on personal, social and marketing factors that implicate fast food addiction.

The consumption of fast food was the focus of analysis. Therefore, research adds value to service industry and helps in developing growth and marketing strategies for the fast food industry.

Snacking typically occurs as an automatic, consciously uncontrolled process which can lead to unintended health consequences. Grounded cognition informs about the multifaceted drivers of such automatic consumption processes. By integrating situation-, stimulus-, and person-specific factors, this study provides a holistic account of snacking.

A combined psychophysiological and behavioral experiment is conducted wherein participants can casually snack chocolate while participating in a survey setting. Implicit cognitions are assessed with the Implicit Association Test. The percentage of consumed chocolate serves as dependent variable in a Tobit regression with predictors at situation, stimulus and person level.

Chocolate snacking is positively influenced by personal craving tendencies, implicit food associations and situational contingency. We condense the results into an overarching framework in line with grounded cognition literature.

The multidimensional framework can guide consumer protection efforts to reduce excessive snacking habits based on situation, stimulus and person.

This study integrates theory from social cognition, consumer research, and behavioral food research and, thereby, extends the existing body of knowledge on grounded cognitions underlying snacking consumption.

Consumers’ attitudes, especially their attitudes towards health and taste, are significant in understanding and predicting dietary behaviour. In this research, Health and Taste Attitude Scales (HTAS) developed by Roininen et al. in 1999 for measuring health and taste attitudes of consumers, were applied in Serbia. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether the same sub-scales can be identified as in HTAS applications abroad, to test the predictive validity of HTAS and to investigate respondents’ health and taste attitudes in the context of their socio-demographic characteristics.

Primary data were gathered by means of focus groups and a survey – structured personal interviews by using a questionnaire. The research was conducted in July 2013 with 300 respondents participating.

The same sub-scales were identified in Serbian consumer research as in HTAS applications abroad. Generally, all the Health sub-scales are useful predictors of consumption of several types of food perceived as healthy, while the Taste sub-scales (except Pleasure) are good predictors of consumption of both, food considered as tasty and food considered as not tasty. Out of socio-demographic variables, only age showed statistically significant correlations to some of the Taste sub-scales.

Several recommendations for companies operating on the domestic food market were given in this paper.

The first application of HTAS in Serbia, generally characterized by scarce food consumer research, was shown in this paper. It is also the first application of HTAS in a Southern European country.

This study aims to empirically investigate how the interaction effect of occasion-setting cues and consumers’ cognitive styles (e.g. field dependence levels) influences their food intake intention.

In this research, several scenario simulation studies were conducted to verify the hypotheses. A total of 646 participants were recruited for the experiments, and samples were obtained through well-established online research platforms.

In the occasion-setting cue advertisement condition, field-dependent (vs field-independent) consumers displayed increased cravings for food and purchase intention, with mental simulation playing a mediating role and cognitive load playing a moderating role.

The influence of others (e.g. servers and other consumers) was not taken into consideration in this study. Future research can extend this study by conducting field experiments.

The research conclusions can help various organisations reduce consumers’ food overconsumption intention and encourage healthier food choices by adjusting occasion-setting cues in marketing stimuli and identifying the target consumers’ cognitive styles.

Based on embodied cognition theory, this study reveals the influence and internal mechanism of the interaction effect between occasion-setting cues and individual cognitive style on eating desire.

Food and eating may have strong effects on mood. Although many of the ideas put forward by popular writers on this subject have lacked scientific credibility, more rigorous research has begun to identify some important relationships between food and mood. These relationships can be complex, and may be modified by individual and contextual factors. Where they exist, effects of food on mood can be expected to feed back to influence food choice on subsequent occasions. A challenge of future research is to identify the mechanisms which mediate the sensory, nutritional, and pharmacological actions of foods and food constituents on mood.