IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chu/wpaper/21-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Influence of Food Recommendations: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Kamal Bookwala

    (University of California Irvine, Department of Economics)

  • Caleb Gallemore

    (Lafayette College, Department of International Affairs)

  • Joaquin Gomez-Minambres

    (Lafayette College, Department of Economics and Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.)

Abstract

We report results from a randomized field experiment conducted at two food festivals. Our primary aim is to assess the impact of two types of recommendations commonly observed in food settings: most popular and chef’s choice. Subjects select a cupcake from a binary menu. The two options, offered by the same bakery, are the best seller in the bakery and the baker's recommended cupcake. Our treatments manipulate whether the recommendation is disclosed in tandem with the cupcakes in the menu. We find that the most popular is the only recommendation that statistically significantly increased consumers’ demand relative to a baseline without recommendations. Furthermore, we find that this effect only holds for subjects from outside the local region. Our results are consistent with laboratory studies indicating information on peers' choices is a powerful influence on consumers' decisions, especially in the absence of prior knowledge.

Suggested Citation

  • Kamal Bookwala & Caleb Gallemore & Joaquin Gomez-Minambres, 2021. "The Influence of Food Recommendations: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," Working Papers 21-06, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:21-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/343/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Recommendations; Social learning; Herd behavior; Peer effects;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:21-06. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Megan Luetje (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.