Do pictures help? The effects of pictures and food names on menu evaluations

Presenting pictures along with food names on menus is a common practice in the restaurant industry. However, it is not clear whether adding pictures to menus always leads to positive effects. In addition, since more restaurant practitioners are creating ambiguous names for their dishes, it is valuable to study how pictures with different types of food names impact customers’ attitudes and behavioral outcomes. In the current study, we examine the joint effect of pictures, food names, and individuals’ information processing styles on consumers’ attitudes, willingness to pay, and purchase intentions. The results reveal that for common descriptive food names, adding pictures have a positive effect on consumers’ attitudes toward the menu item, their willingness to pay and their purchase intentions. More interestingly, for ambiguous food names, pictures have a positive effect only among verbalizers. Visualizers exhibit less favorable attitudes and behavioral outcomes after viewing ambiguously-named dishes with pictures than those without pictures.