The Effect of Meal Replacement Package Color Saturation and Front-of-Package Nutrition Labels on Purchase Intention

This study explores the interaction of meal replacement package color saturation and front-of-package (FOP) nutrition label type on consumers’ purchase intentions, and examines perceived healthiness’ mediating role to fill package design research gaps. There were 423 valid participants in three online experiments (all with normal/corrected vision and no color vision deficiency). Experiment 1 (n = 73, 11-level saturation design: -100 to + 100 at 20-unit intervals) found that high saturation (+80) significantly improved perceived healthiness (M = 5.30 ± 0.21), 9.8% higher than the low-saturation group (M = 4.39–4.84, p < 0.05). Experiment 2 (n = 113) demonstrated that the perceived healthiness of the evaluative labels (M = 4.96 ± 1.28) was higher than that of the descriptive labels (M = 2.96 ± 1.52, t = –7.568, p < 0.001). Experiment 3 (n = 237, 2 × 2 design) verified that high saturation (+80) + evaluative labels significantly outperformed low saturation (–20) + descriptive labels (both p < 0.001) in terms of perceived healthiness (M = 5.57 ± 0.38) and purchase intention (M = 5.49 ± 0.67). Bootstrap analysis (n = 5000) revealed perceived healthiness largely influenced label type (effect = 0.186, 26.80%, 95%CI[0.045, 0.356]) and saturation (effect = 0.210, 27.78%, 95%CI[0.041, 0.400]) on purchase intentions. A “high saturation (+80) + evaluative labels” strategy is proposed to guide food packaging and marketing.