Influence of expectation violation on the subsequent label search

• This study examined how the violation of expectations influenced the subsequent searches. • Recent search history modulated the color-flavor incongruency effect. • Participants showed smaller incongruency effects after they searched for an incongruent target. • Participants showed flexibility and adaptivity in product searches. Previous research has shown that people rely on color expectations to guide the visual search for flavor labels. We report two experiments designed to examine how the violation of such expectations influenced the subsequent searches. Participants were cued by a flavor word before searching for the packaging with this flavor label. They were slower to find the target whose color violated their expectations, indicative of a significant color-flavor incongruency effect. When searching for the same targets across two consecutive trials, they showed smaller color-flavor incongruency effects after they had searched for a color-flavor incongruent target compared to a congruent target in the preceding trial. When they were searching for different targets from one trial to the next, their searches were speeded after they had searched for a color-flavor incongruent target compared to a congruent one in the preceding trial. Collectively, these results revealed how the color-flavor incongruency effect was modulated by the recent history of expectation violation in repeated searches, whereas we also observed a facilitation of expectation violation on the subsequent searches for different targets. These findings demonstrate how consumers’ product searches can be influenced by packaging design, and shed light on the flexibility and adaptivity of label searches.