A framing effect, drawn from a set of 19 experiments, in which describing a product as having fewer ingredients increases purchase likelihood — shoppers read "fewer" as a proxy for "more natural" and "healthier."
Framing an identical product as having fewer ingredients raised choice rates by roughly 22% for a granola bar, 16% for a juice, and 67% for peanut butter, and produced up to 44% more clicks on Meta ads for the same product.
The effect reverses for products bought primarily for pleasure (e.g., dark chocolate) or for nutritional variety (e.g., vitamins/supplements), where more ingredients can signal more flavor or more benefit — so the tactic requires opposite execution depending on the category's purchase motivation.
For functional or health-motivated categories, state the ingredient count prominently in the title, bullets, Amazon A+ Content, and on-package copy, using a digit (e.g., "3") rather than the spelled-out word. For pleasure- or variety-driven categories, emphasize richness or benefit variety instead of a low ingredient count.