Assessing the shape symbolism of the taste, flavour, and texture of foods and beverages

Looking through the annals of marketing history, one finds occasional mention of the existence of a variety of cross-modal correspondences between abstract shapes and basic tastes. Generally speaking, cross-modal correspondences can be defined as a tendency for an individual to match (or associate) a feature, or attribute, in one sensory modality with a sensory feature, or attribute, in another sensory modality, no matter whether physically present or merely imagined [1,2]. So, for example, back in 1971, Ernst Dichter [3] reported that consumers typically matched more rounded shapes (for example, circles) with foods and beverages having a prominent sweet taste, while matching bitter-tasting foodstuffs with more angular shapes (such as stars and triangles) instead. Dichter’s colleague, Louis Cheskin, also discussed such shape-taste associations. He was particularly interested in how they could be utilised by marketers in the design of product packaging to set up the right, or appropriate, expectations in the mind of the consumer (for example, Cheskin [4]). A number of beverage products already appear to use angular red shapes, frequently a star, but sometimes also a triangle or pyramid, in order to subconsciously signal to the consumer that the contents of the packaging are carbonated, and/or bitter-tasting. Why else, one might ask, do so many brands of sparkling water adorn their product packaging with such symbols (Figure 1A, B, and C)? Well, it turns out that these shapes may be more than purely symbolic.On the one hand, it could be argued that the triangular shape on the front of the Apollinaris bottle (Figure 1B) is actually meant to symbolise a mountain. One could also point to the fact that stars are commonly used to recognize prize-winning, high quality, and/or success in whatever they are associated with. Hence, one might think that this is the reason why such shapes appear so frequently on the labelling of bottled waters. However, the key point to note here