Products in Disguise: Communicating Product Benefits with Surface Mimicry.

This article investigates the concept of surface mimicry—designing a product to visually resemble another product—as a strategy to communicate product property information to consumers, particularly to enhance the appeal of healthy foods. It demonstrates through five studies that surface mimicry primes a cognitive process called property mapping, whereby consumers transfer salient, alignable, and dissimilar attributes (e.g., tastiness) from a mimicked product (such as a tasty food) onto a target product (such as a healthy but less tasty food), thereby improving taste perceptions and increasing purchase intentions and consumption. The research also finds that this effect diminishes when the difference in beliefs between the target and mimicked products is too large, limiting the credibility of the transferred attributes. These findings offer theoretical insights into visual design's role in shaping product beliefs and practical implications for marketers and policymakers aiming to promote healthier eating without compromising consumer autonomy.