Tempting More Than Taste Buds: How Packaging Influences Chocolate Choices

When it comes to premium chocolates, you can’t always trust what your taste buds are telling you. 

New research from Bentley’s Mounia Ziat reveals that packaging cues — including color, texture and how it opens — secretly influence our perceptions of flavor. In other words, our eyes and fingers are telling our brains what to think about a piece of chocolate before we take our first bite.  

“From a cognitive perspective, this is known as predictive processing,” explains Ziat, an associate professor of Experience Design and an expert in multisensory perception. “Our brains are constantly anticipating what we’re about to experience, and packaging provides powerful clues that help shape those expectations.” 

Putting Packaging to the Test 

To explore the hidden power of chocolate packaging, Ziat and research assistant Shuangshuang Xiao, MSHFID ’21, a graduate of Bentley’s Master’s in Human Factors in Design program, designed a controlled taste experiment.  

They created 18 different box designs by mixing and matching multiple features, including: 

• Color: white, purple
• Texture: smooth, raised dots, embossed pattern
• Unboxing interaction: lift-off, slide-and-tilt, snail-fold 

Each combination was tested both with and without the presence of a chocolate scent, creating a total of 36 different packaging scenarios.  

Notably, each box contained a single, identical piece of premium chocolate. The only thing that changed was the packaging — and with it, people’s perceptions of flavor, quality and value. 

Unpacking the Results 

After tasting each chocolate, participants completed a series of surveys. They were asked to rank qualities such as flavor intensity and overall liking, describe their emotional response to both the product and its packaging, and share price expectations and future purchase intentions.  

The results showed tactile qualities had a strong effect. Raised textures made the chocolate seem more indulgent, Ziat says, while smooth boxes were seen as ordinary. Color intensified this effect: Chocolates from purple boxes with raised textures were judged to have more intense flavors, and testers were willing to pay more for them.  

Among all the packaging variables, unboxing interaction proved the most powerful. More intricate opening mechanisms created a sense of anticipation that translated into higher perceived chocolate quality and greater willingness to pay. Participants consistently rated the snail-fold box — a layered design that unfolds gradually, one section at a time — as most attractive.  

This finding mirrors a familiar cultural trend: the rise of “unboxing” videos on social media, which have become powerful marketing tools. Put simply, the longer the wait, the higher the perceived reward. 

Ziat, whose research focuses on haptics — technologies that stimulate our senses of touch and motion — isn’t surprised by these results. “Touch plays a much larger role in perception than most people realize,” she explains. “Our brains integrate tactile sensations automatically, so we don’t always recognize how much they’re influencing what we think or feel in a given moment.”

The Surprising Effect of Scents 

For Ziat, scent emerged as the most intriguing variable. In scent-present scenarios, the researchers sprayed a dark chocolate-scented cologne in the room five minutes before participants arrived. (Scent-absent experiments were conducted in a different location.) 

Overall, the presence of scent had a positive effect. Participants rated these chocolates as having more intense flavors and appearing more luxurious, which translated into higher purchase intentions. Aroma also helped compensate for less engaging packaging features, such as simpler colors, smoother textures and basic unboxing interactions. Smooth white boxes, for example, were rated more favorably when scent was present than when it was absent.  

The added aroma, however, came with a tradeoff. In scent-present scenarios, participants reported lower overall satisfaction and were less willing to sample another piece of chocolate. The presence of scent appeared to push the experience past its sweet spot, overwhelming the senses rather than enhancing pleasure. 

“We call this hedonic overload,” Ziat explains. “At a certain point, stimulating too many senses at once can reduce enjoyment rather than increase it.”

Packaging That Means Business 

Chocolate may have been the test case for this study, but its findings extend far beyond the candy counter. From cosmetics to consumer electronics, packaging plays a powerful role in shaping consumer expectations — signaling quality, value and care long before a product is opened or used.  

“Packaging does so much more than protect a product,” Ziat says. She encourages companies to think more intentionally about sensory interaction as part of the overall customer experience. “When designed thoughtfully, packaging becomes a bridge between product and perception.”