How can food become fun? Exploring and testing possibilities …

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to understand, from a theoretical standpoint and from an empirical perspective, why food products can be designed and perceived as “playful” and “funny”. Drawing on the experiential framework developed in marketing research and recent advances in theories of play, it seeks to clarify the conceptual articulation of “play” with “fun” and it seeks to highlight the need to reconsider the contribution of the product in framing situations that children experience as “playful” and “fun”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper focuses on qualitative data gathered through a combination of observations and in‐depth interviews of 14 dyads “child‐mother” confronted by four product innovations at a prototype stage, and a series of eight focus groups involving children from three to eight years old as well as their mothers.FindingsChildren were very able to categorize food products by appreciating their different degrees of fun. The study led to the identification and coding of 13 key dimensions associated with “playfulness” and “fun” in a food product.Practical implicationsThe paper offers a heuristic operational tool to guide marketing managers and R&D teams in their exploration and testing of the possibilities/impossibilities in the association of “playfulness” and “fun” with food products aimed at children.Originality/valueThe research demonstrates that some dimensions which characterize play cannot be directly applied to food products, and differentiates “playful” from “fun” by considering the intensity of the social interaction being developed through the food product or food consumption situation.