Carlos Velasco

BI Norwegian Business School | BINBS · Department of Marketing

A growing body of empirical research now demonstrates that people associate different basic tastes and taste words with specific packaging shapes. While it may be obvious that semantic knowledge concerning products, based on the packaging and/or design elements (e.g., typeface, logo, label, images), can guide the taste expectations that consumers g...

People are increasingly purchasing (e.g., food, clothes) and consuming (e.g., movies, courses) online where, traditionally, the sensory interaction has mostly been limited to visual, and to a lesser extent auditory, inputs. However, other sensory interfaces (e.g., including touch screens, together with a range of virtual, and augmented solutions) a...

Most of our everyday life experiences are multisensory in nature; that is, they consist of what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and much more. Almost any experience you can think of, such as eating a meal or going to the cinema, involves a magnificent sensory world. In recent years, many of these experiences have been increasingly transformed an...

We focus on the ethical questions associated of the digitization of our experiences. We postulate that we are in an unprecedented time for “experience programming” considering that the temporal and spatial distance between stimuli, customer action, data footprint and tracking, and contingency (touchpoint) mapping, is narrowing. This and the attenti...

The past two decades have seen an explosion of research on crossmodal correspondences. Broadly speaking, this term has been used to encompass associations between and among features, dimensions, or attributes across the senses. There has been an increasing interest in this topic amongst researchers from multiple fields (psychology, neuroscience, mu...

Intrinsic and extrinsic sensory elements influence our food experiences. However, most research in extrinsic multisensory aspects of food has centered on WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) urban participants. This study breaks from this by investigating multisensory eating experiences in the context of Northern Norway, a...

In the context of the experience economy, multisensory experiences have certainly received growing attention and interest from both researchers and practitioners to guide the design and management of experiences. Importantly, multisensory experiences are increasingly influenced and transformed by a number of technologies such as those in extended r...

Distributional semantic representations were used to investigate crossmodal correspondences within language, offering a comprehensive analysis of how sensory experiences interconnect in linguistic constructs. By computing semantic proximity between words from different sensory modalities, a crossmodal semantic network was constructed, providing a g...

Alternative proteins have recently received significant attention from both academia and industry. Given the reported lower willingness of consumers to accept these alternative protein sources, it is crucial to gain insights into consumers' perceptions of them. Study 1, based on the theory of the meaning of objects and concepts, unveiled the connot...

People generally associate curved and symmetrical shapes with sweetness, while associating angular and asymmetrical shapes with the other basic tastes (e.g., sour, bitter). However, these group-level taste-shape correspondences likely conceal important variation at an individual-level. We examined the extent to which individuals vary in their sensi...

Insights → Space food is more than nutrition; it affects astronauts" sensory, emotional, and social well-being, making it crucial to consider these aspects in design. → Concepts like Earth Memory Bites use advanced tech, fostering connections between space missions and cultural traditions while enhancing astronauts' well-being and satisfaction.

A multitude of crossmodal correspondences have now been documented between taste (gustation) and visual features (such as hue). In the present study, new analytical methods are used to investigate taste-colour correspondences in a more fine-grained manner while also investigating potential underlying mechanisms. In Experiment 1, image processing an...

There has been a noticeable increase of interest in research on multisensory flavour perception in recent years. Humans are visually dominant creatures and a growing body of research has investigated how visual cues influence taste/flavour perception. At the same time, however, several null or limited findings have also been published recently; tha...

People reliably associate visual aesthetic features such as curvature and symmetry with tastes. In the present study, considering the transitive hypothesis of crossmodal correspondences, we evaluate whether these findings extend to the relationship between sound aesthetic features and tastes, and whether feature-based congruency or affective primin...

In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in crossmodal correspondences, including those involving temperature. However, only a few studies have explicitly examined the underlying mechanisms behind temperature-related correspondences. Here, we investigated the relative roles of an underlying affective mechanism and a semantic path (i.e...

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital assets that exist in a given blockchain. NFT projects, containing unique collections of these assets, are blockchain-based companies that deliver value to customers. Why do people buy NFTs paying up to millions of dollars? Given the lack of studies on what makes NFTs valuable to consumers, we conceptual...

Research on multisensory food perception suggests that most of our senses can influence eating experiences. The present research evaluates how different senses are engaged across country-specific eating experiences. Our goal is to explore each country's prototypical multisensory eating experience throughout the seasons. In Study 1A and 1B, we used...

Visual textures are critical in how individuals form sensory expectations about objects, which include somatosensory properties such as temperature. This study aimed to uncover crossmodal associations between visual textures and temperature concepts. In Experiment 1 (N = 193), we evaluated crossmodal associations between 43 visual texture categorie...

We took advantage of the semantic proximity captured by Word Embeddings to identify semantic associations between senses, as embedded in language. We explored the structure of the network of semantic associations between senses arising from English word vectors of different sense modalities that are especially closer to each other. Our results lead...

Packaging and label design are crucial in facilitating the perception of brand premiumness. However, we know relatively little about how common design characteristics used in a product’ packaging affect consumers’ perception of premiumness. Related research suggests that consumers may associate some features, such as symmetry, with premiumness, giv...

We test how and why food taste and brand personality interactively influence consumer evaluations. Although food branding is a substantial and large market, studies on food taste and brand personality have only been conducted separately. Across four studies (including one real-brand study), the present study aimed to reveal the association between...

There is an increasing interest in food within the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field with emerging interactive prototypes that augment, extend, and challenge the various ways in which people engage with food. The emerging subfield is defined as “Human-Food Interaction” (HFI). Given the rapid advancement of interactive technology that converges...

This paper questions whether manufacturers can utilize visual packaging cues, in particular colours and shapes, to communicate the intrinsic attributes of cheeses. While the existence of crossmodal correspondences between packaging shapes and tastes have been demonstrated in previous food studies, we still need knowledge about how the interaction o...

The oral-somatosensory mouthfeel of foodstuffs is a critical factor driving liking and acceptability. Previous studies have revealed that the use of auditory and visual elements in food packaging can affect consumers’ sensory expectations of food. It is worth noting that most of these studies have focused on visual elements. However, research on th...

In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in crossmodal correspondences, including those involving temperature. However, only a few studies have explicitly examined the underlying mechanisms behind temperature-related correspondences. Here, we investigated the relative roles of an underlying affective mechanism and a semantic path (i.e...

We evaluated how beer colour and glass type interact when it comes to forming beer expectations. Following previous research, we predicted that, given that colour is a dominant feature in food and beverage expectations, it would modulate the effects of glass type on beer expectations. One hundred and ninety-five participants from the United Kingdom...

Thoughts and associations are spontaneously generated and situated. A growing body of research on crossmodal correspondences has revealed that individuals tend to associate information across sensory modalities. However, most of the findings have been based on restricted sensory pairs/items and the role of context remains largely unexplored. Relyin...

Throughout six experiments (five pre-registered), we found that embodying a product with emotional content, by using emoji facial expressions, influences its expected temperature in online settings. A negative valence, low arousal expression on the receptacle of a hot chocolate beverage leads to lower expected temperature than a positive valence, h...

The reality-virtuality continuum encompasses a multitude of objects, events and environments ranging from real-world multisensory inputs to interactive multisensory virtual simulators, in which sensory integration can involve very different combinations of both physical and digital inputs. These different ways of stimulating the senses can affect t...

Numerous crossmodal correspondences between visual elements and basic tastes have been documented in recent years. Research has shown that many of these correspondences can influence taste expectations when applied in food packaging. However, research on correspondences between visual textures and tastes is scarce, despite the ability of the former...

We investigate whether the typeface used to display the purchase amount in the context of mobile payment influences consumers’ awareness of spending. The evidence suggests that prices displayed in angular (vs. round) typeface increase the awareness of spending in the context of mobile payment via the perceived harshness of the typeface and the expe...

In the latter half of the 19th Century, the chemist and perfumer Septimus Piesse drew attention to the close association (or similarity) that he felt existed between fragrance and music/sound. But what, one might be tempted to ask, is the value of knowing about such audio-olfactory associations (or crossmodal correspondences)? Here, we highlight a...

Eating and drinking are undoubtedly amongst life’s most multisensory experiences. Take, for instance, the enjoyment of flavor, which is one of the most important elements of such experiences, resulting from the integration of gustatory, (retronasal) olfactory, and possibly also trigeminal/oral-somatosensory cues. Nevertheless, researchers have sugg...

Eating and drinking are undoubtedly amongst life’s most multisensory experiences. Take, for instance, the enjoyment of flavor, which is one of the most important elements of such experiences, resulting from the integration of gustatory, (retronasal) olfactory, and possibly also trigeminal/oral-somatosensory cues (Prescott, 2015). Nevertheless, rese...

We present a perspective article on the state of multisensory human-food interaction (MHFI) research and lay out some reflections for research and development in this area of inquiry, based on a revision of the different spaces that we have co-created for researchers to present work in it. We begin by conceptualizing and defining MHFI, before movin...

There is a growing interest in insects as a promising alternative source of protein that can potentially contribute to help solving the imminent global food crisis. However, research on insect-based foods (IBFs) has repeatedly pointed to the fact that, in many countries and cultures, negative attitudes towards eating insects are one of the most sig...

There has been an ever-increasing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) in the hospitality sector. However, it is still unclear how consumers respond to products/services in hospitality industries provided by AI. Building on the theoretical framework for using AI in different services and the literature on luxury consumption across four studies,...

Store atmospheres are inherently multisensory and constitute an important driver of consumer behaviour. The research suggests that background music (as one element of the multisensory atmosphere) can influence consumer preference and choice. However, the findings have been inconsistent as far as how background music influences people’s preferences...

When do aesthetic properties convey the concept of premiumness? Is symmetry tied to the perception of premiumness due to symmetry’s evolutionary association to quality, an association not present with other aesthetic features like curvature? Usually, symmetry and curvature are preferred features. However, preference itself may not suffice to evoke...

Engineering healthy diets from sustainable food resources undoubtedly constitutes a major global challenge. One solution to the problem of developing healthy and sustainable diets involves the incorporation of various novel/unfamiliar foods into our diets (e.g., insect-based foods, cultured meats, plant-based meat alternatives, and 3D printed foods...

We introduce a model to think about impossible experiences in mixed and virtual reality, while emphasizing the role of said experiences in the context of food. This reality-impossibility model includes two continua, namely, the reality-fantasy character of objects and environments, and the extent to which they follow the physics laws-other laws. We...

As we tend to consume more and more via e-commerce platforms, the digital version of a dietary product’s package can be one of the most important touchpoints that the consumer has with such product during the purchasing stage of the consumer’s journey. Hence, a dietary food/drink properly presented via its packaging in e-commerce is key, for exampl...

During the first sequence of lockdowns implemented in many countries around the world in early 2020 as a result of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, there was widespread concern amongst many health professionals regarding a predicted rise in alcohol consumption. However, studies have reported diverse findings, with some consumer groups exhibiting an...

Editorial of special issue "multisensory consumer-computer interaction" in the Journal of Business Research.

Emotions and temperature are closely related through embodied processes, and people seem to associate temperature concepts with emotions. While this relationship is often evidenced by everyday language (e.g., cold and warm feelings), what remains missing to date is a systematic study that holistically analyzes how and why people associate specific...

While virtual reality (VR) has become increasingly popular in food-related research, there has been a lack of clarity, precision, and guidelines regarding what exactly constitutes a virtual reality study, as well as the options available to the researcher for designing and implementing it. This review provides a practical guide for sensory and cons...

There is an increasing interest in food within the HCI discipline, with many interactive prototypes emerging that augment, extend and challenge the various ways people engage with food, ranging from growing plants, cooking ingredients, serving dishes and eating together. Grounding theory is also emerging that in particular draws from embodied inter...

Multisensory integration research has allowed us to better understand how humans integrate sensory information to produce a unitary experience of the external world. However, this field is often challenged by the limited ability to deliver and control sensory stimuli, especially when going beyond audio–visual events and outside laboratory settings....

This research examines how consumers’ intentions to purchase food change depending on the visualisation mode (3D vs. AR) and product format (served vs. packaged). In three studies, we demonstrate that mental simulation of eating experiences (process and outcome) mediate these effects. Study 1 shows that AR visualisation of a served food improves si...

With its origin-centric value proposition, the specialty coffee industry seeks to educate consumers about the value of the origin of coffee and how the relationship with farmers ensures quality and makes coffee a premium product. While the industry has widely used stories and visual cues to communicate this added value, research studying whether an...

Previous research has suggested that people prefer balanced over unbalanced plating compositions. Importantly, though, the question remains as to whether plating balance influences consumers’ associations of plating with approach and avoidance motivation. In the present research, we study how plating balance influence people’s aesthetic evaluations...

We present a primer on multisensory experiences, the different components of this concept, as well as a reflection of its implications for individuals and society. We define multisensory experiences, we illustrate how to understand them, we elaborate on the role of technology in such experiences, and present the three laws of multisensory experienc...

The increased disruption of business models through digital technologies creates opportunities and challenges for retail businesses and their network partners. Digital transformation-the process of digitalization of previously analogue operations, procedures, organizational tasks, and managerial processes in order to drive value for customers, empl...

The increased disruption of business models through digital technologies creates opportunities and challenges for retail businesses and their network partners. Digital transformation-the process of digitalization of previously analogue operations, procedures, organizational tasks, and managerial processes in order to drive value for customers, empl...

Here, we present the outcome of the 4 th workshop on Multisensory Approaches to Human-Food Interaction (MHFI), developed in collaboration with ICMI 2020 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Capitalizing on the increasing interest on multisensory aspects of human-food interaction and the unique contribution that our community offers, we developed a space to...

What is an ‘experience’, and what role do the senses play in our experiences? Is it possible to design specific experiences with the senses in mind? These questions have fascinated generations of philosophers, scientists, artists, and, increasingly, technologists. This chapter describes the fundamentals of multisensory experiences and presents our...

This chapter introduces the reader to the exciting world of multisensory experiences. It describes how humans perceive and experience the world around them with all five senses. It also describes a number of initiatives in academia and industry that consider the different senses when designing experiences such as going to an art gallery, eating, an...

What are the implications of designing the multisensory worlds in which we live? This final chapter synthesizes the current state of multisensory experiences and reflects on their implications for individuals and societies, as well as the use of technology to extend or augment our human capabilities. It postulates three laws of multisensory experie...

As technology advances, and our understanding of the human senses grows, we will be able to augment existing experiences but also create previously unimaginable ones. For example, we are just starting to understand how our senses change in outer space. We and several other researchers are developing technology-enabled experiences that consider thes...

Do you remember the one time you forgot your smartphone at home, the Internet connection did not work, or your computer just did not turn on? Many of us have experienced those frustrating, almost desperate moments. And yet, we crave for new ways of interacting with and through technology. This chapter illustrates how the senses are increasingly mee...

Here, we present the outcome of the 4th workshop on Multisensory Approaches to Human-Food Interaction (MHFI), developed in collaboration with ICMI 2020 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Capitalizing on the increasing interest on multisensory aspects of human-food interaction and the unique contribution that our community offers, we developed a space to...

Most of our everyday life experiences are multisensory in nature, i.e. they consist of what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and much more. Almost any experience, such as eating a meal or going to the cinema, involves a magnificent sensory world. In recent years, many of these experiences have been increasingly transformed through technological ad...

One common definition of premiumness is as a higher quality and more expensive variant of a product than other members of the category or reference class. Brand premiumness can effectively be conveyed by means of different sensory cues of brand touchpoints (e.g., colours, sounds, weight). However, to date, research linking the sound of a product’...

A significant body of research demonstrates the existence of taste-shape correspondences. People associate tastes and visual shapes non-randomly. For example, round shapes are associated with sweet taste, while angular shapes are associated with sour and bitter tastes. Previous studies focused on one-to-one taste-shape associations, where either ge...

The present research investigates the general effect of noise control in individual’s eating and drinking experiences. In particular, the study applied passive vs active commercial headphone noise control techniques to an urban drinking situation. Here, each participant drank twice the same coffee while exposed to a louder (∼ 85 dBA) vs less loud (...

Research on those variables that have been shown to influence the consumer’s choice of beer is reviewed. The focus is on the choice of whether to drink beer as opposed to a beverage from another category, and to a greater extent, the choice between different types of beer. Inspired by previous research on a diverse array of factors that have been s...

Insect-based foods have gained much attention as an alternative source of protein in recent years because of their high nutritional content and low production costs. However, consumer acceptance of insect-based foods still poses a big challenge in many societies. Across three studies, we examined how social companions (alone, friend, family, acquai...

In the marketing literature, the ‘K effect’ refers to the claim that the letter K is overrepresented as the initial letter of brand names. To date, however, most findings have only considered the frequency of the written letters incorporated into brand names. Here, we argue that since letters sometimes sound different when pronounced in different w...

Research on aesthetic science has demonstrated that people generally prefer symmetrical over asymmetrical compositions. However, it remains unclear whether and how such compositions relate to the concepts of approach and avoidance motivation, especially, in consumer contexts. In addition, it is not known how symmetry may influence such concepts in...

Brand names are a crucial part of the brand equity and marketing strategy of any company. Research suggests that companies spend considerable time and money to create suitable names for their brands and products. This paper uses the Zipf's law (or Principle of Least Effort) to analyze the perceived luxuriousness of brand names. One of the most robu...

What we hear before and/or while we eat and drink often affects our tasting experiences. The focus of Auditory Contributions to Food Perception and Consume Behaviour is to provide a state-of-the-art summary on how such music and ambient inputs can influence our expectations, our purchasing behaviour, as well as our product experience. Much of the r...

Product names can be developed to effectively convey specific sensory attributes to the consumer. Most of previous research on crossmodal correspondences has shown that people selectively associate words (e.g., ‘Maluma’, ‘Takete’) with taste attributes. To provide practical insights for naming new products in the food industry, it is important to o...

Under what circumstances do visual aesthetic properties convey the concept of premiumness? For example, is symmetry tied to the perception of premiumness due to symmetry’s evolutionary association to quality, an association not present with other aesthetic features like curvature? Usually, symmetry is preferred over asymmetry, and curvature is pref...

Given the increasing possibilities of short- and long-term space travel to the Moon and Mars, it is essential not only to design nutritious foods but also to make eating an enjoyable experience. To date, though, most research on space food design has emphasized the functional and nutritional aspects of food, and there are no systematic studies that...

Purpose With trade amounting to more than US$400bn, counterfeiting is already affecting many successful brands. Often, consumers are deceived into buying fake products due to the visual similarity between fake and original brand logos. This paper aims to explore the varying forms of fraudulent imitation of original brand logotypes (operationalized...

Purpose: Counterfeiting is a menace in the emerging markets and many successful brands are falling prey to it. Counterfeit brands not only deceive consumers but also fuel a demand for lower priced replicas, both of which can devalue the bona-fide brand. But can consumers accurately identify a counterfeit logo? This paper explores this question and...

Food product-extrinsic sounds (i.e., those auditory stimuli that are not linked directly to a food or beverage product, or its packaging) have been shown to exert a significant influence over various aspects of food perception and consumer behaviour, often operating outside of conscious awareness. In this review, we summarise the latest evidence co...

Exaggerated portion sizes are generally pictured on the front of product packaging in order to stimulate food craving and encourage consumer purchasing decisions. However, one problem with such images is that they can set inappropriate norms as far as food consumption is concerned and hence result in people serving themselves more than they otherwi...

This edited collection presents state-of-the-art reviews of the latest developments in multisensory packaging design. Bringing together leading researchers and practitioners working in the field, the contributions consider how our growing understanding of the human senses, as well as new technologies, will transform the way in which we design, inte...

Packaging provides the means of protecting, transporting, and conserving the product that happens to be contained within. Nowadays, packaging also constitutes a powerful brand element, one that can be used to convey information, create value, persuade the consumer, modulate their behaviour. In this chapter, we introduce the topic and present packag...

Traditionally, the design of brand elements and marketing communications has focused on visual and/or audiovisual attributes in order to convey a specific brand positioning or concept to the consumer. However, the majority of consumers’ everyday experiences go beyond simply just audiovisual inputs. With this in mind, in this chapter, we take an inc...

Given the explosion of interest in the fields of multisensory packaging design and consumer neuroscience/neuromarketing in recent years, it is natural to wonder what relevance the latter approaches have as far as the optimization of the former is concerned. In this review, we chart the use of neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography a...

Colour is a key element in multisensory packaging design and branding. In-store, and increasingly online, it plays an important role in guiding the shopper’s attention. A distinctive colour/colour scheme can also act as a valuable brand asset, signalling a specific brand and everything that it stands for. That said, in many product categories, pack...

Choosing the appropriate typeface and font for use in product packaging is an important part of the design process (or at least it should be). Yet, at the same time, it is also an area that is often neglected in books on packaging. This is particularly surprising given that virtually all packaging incorporates some text (e.g., logotypes, slogans, p...

The last few years have seen an ongoing increase of interest in multisensory brand analysis and design. However, with the growing opportunity to design for each and every one of the customer’s senses, comes the challenge of knowing how best to conceptualize multisensory design without immediately becoming overwhelmed by the range of possibilities (...

The recent development of various sensory-enabling technologies (SETs) has attracted the interest of those marketers wishing to enhance the online and in-store multisensory experiences that they offer to customers. Such technologies have also proven relevant to the delivery of more engaging multisensory human-food interactions. However, to date, li...

Film makers, producers, and theaters have continuously looked at ways to embody and/or integrate multiple sensory cues in the experiences they deliver. Here, we present a reflection on past attempts, lessons learnt, and future directions for the community around multisensory TV, film, and multimedia as a historical, though renewed, space of content...

Welcome to the 3rd workshop on Multisensory Approaches to Human-Food Interaction (MHFI), Boulder, Colorado, USA, October 16th, 2018, held in conjunction with the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2018). In this 3rd workshop on Multi-Sensorial Approaches to Human-Food Interaction, we again called for investigations an...

In light of short- and long-term space travels to the Moon and Mars, it is essential to design nutritious foods, but also to make eating an enjoyable experience. To date, though, most research on space food design emphasizes the functional and nutritional aspects of food, but there are no systematic studies that focus is on the human experience of...

This is the introduction paper to the third version of the workshop on 'Multisensory Approaches to Human-Food Interaction' organized at the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction in Boulder, Colorado, on October 16th, 2018. This workshop is a space where the fast growing research on Multisensory Human-Food Interaction is presen...

People map different sensory stimuli, and words that describe/refer to those stimuli, onto spatial dimensions in a manner that is non-arbitrary. Here, we evaluate whether people also associate basic taste words and products with characteristic tastes with a distinctive location (e.g., upper right corner) or a more general direction (e.g., more righ...

The excitement around computing technology in all aspects of life requires that we tackle fundamental issues of healthcare, leisure, labor, education, and food to create the society we want. The aim of this satellite event was to bring together a variety of different stakeholders, ranging from local food producers, chefs, designers, engineers, data...