Abstract: Sensory cues, such as colors and flavors, are critical factors that influence individuals’ food healthiness perception and choices of healthy foods. The digital marketing environment introduces numerous new applications for these sensory factors. However, there is a lack of systematic discussion on how these various sensory factors affect consumers’ food-healthiness perception and their choices of healthy foods. First, based on differences in sensory distance and in the direct level of sensory experience, this paper classifies food sensory factors into four types, including proximal direct sensory factors, proximal indirect ones, distal direct ones, and distal indirect sensory ones. Next, this paper systematically elaborates on how these four types of sensory factors affect consumers’ food-healthiness perception and choices of healthy foods. Afterwards, this paper discusses the underlying mechanisms and the boundary conditions that could explain the effects of four types of sensory factors on consumers’ food-healthiness perception and choices of healthy foods. Finally, the paper proposes several promising future research directions. This review paper has the potential to make significant contributions to previous literature on food marketing, sensory marketing, and other literature relating to digital technology. Also, this paper provides implications for how to nudge consumers’ healthy-eating decisions.

Key words: distal food sensory factors, proximal food sensory factors, direct experience, indirect experience