French sociologist Claude Fischler’s 1988 paper Food, Self and Identity introduced what’s known as the incorporation principle: unlike clothing, gadgets or gifts, food physically crosses the boundary between “outside” and “inside” the body. Fischler argued that to eat something is, in both a real and symbolic sense, to take on some of its properties.

Applied to branding, that’s a strong claim. A branded mug is used. A branded biscuit is consumed — taken inside the body in a way no other piece of merchandise ever is. It’s a more intimate, and more memorable, brand interaction than almost anything else a business can hand someone.

Research into trait transference, published in the Journal of Business Research, found that when people were incidentally exposed to a brand, its perceived personality traits measurably shaped how observers judged the person associated with it. In plain terms: the qualities people associate with a brand don’t stay with the logo — they transfer onto whoever is holding, wearing or eating it.

For corporate gifting, this cuts both ways. Hand someone a mass-produced, generic item and that’s the impression that transfers. Hand them something genuinely well-made, and the polish, care and quality become part of how they see your business — before a single word is said.

Consumer psychology research on brand experience (Brakus et al.) describes brand interactions as operating across three dimensions at once: sensory, affective-cognitive, and behavioural. A digital ad engages, at best, sight and maybe sound, for a few seconds. Eating a branded biscuit engages sight, smell, touch and taste simultaneously, over several minutes — and requires an active behaviour (unwrapping, breaking, eating) rather than passive scrolling.

That’s a fundamentally richer brand encounter than almost any digital channel can offer, which is part of why edible marketing tends to be remembered long after the impression itself has gone.

Studies on sensation transfer, published in Food Quality and Preference, have found that brand and packaging information doesn’t just shape opinion after the fact — it measurably changes how food is perceived to taste in the moment of eating it. The expectation set by the brand becomes part of the sensory experience itself. Put simply: what someone believes about your brand going in genuinely affects how good your biscuit tastes going down.

The Advertising Specialty Institute’s 2026 Global Advertising Impressions Study, surveying nearly 5,000 consumers, found that promotional products generate around 3,300 brand impressions over their lifespan at a cost of roughly £0.006 per impression, with 85% of recipients able to recall the advertiser. That’s a stronger recall rate than most digital or broadcast advertising achieves.

Edible items add a layer conventional merchandise can’t: they’re not just kept and seen repeatedly, they’re actively consumed and, thanks to incorporation and trait transference, genuinely absorbed into how the recipient perceives the brand. For more on how this plays out in practice, see our guides on what edible marketing is and real edible marketing examples.

If trait transference is real, the logic runs both ways. A logo on a rushed, mass-produced bake transfers exactly that impression — generic, low-effort, forgettable. A logo on something genuinely well made transfers the opposite.

That’s the thinking behind how we build every branded biscuit, logo brownie and branded cake we make. Everything is handmade in small batches rather than mass produced, with no preservatives added — a shorter shelf life, but a genuinely fresh, considered product on the other end. When your logo is what someone is about to eat, the quality of that bite is doing more brand work than almost anything else you could hand them.

Brand transference is the psychological process by which the perceived qualities of a brand carry over onto the person associated with it, based on research into trait transference published in the Journal of Business Research.

Edible marketing engages multiple senses at once — sight, smell, touch and taste — over an extended interaction, compared to a few seconds of passive attention for most digital ads. Industry recall data shows physical promotional items achieve significantly higher brand recall than digital channels.

The incorporation principle, from sociologist Claude Fischler’s 1988 research, describes how food is unique among consumer products because it physically enters and becomes part of the body, making it a uniquely intimate form of brand interaction.

Research on sensation transfer shows that brand and packaging information can measurably influence how food is perceived to taste, meaning expectations set by a brand become part of the sensory experience of eating.

If brand traits transfer onto the recipient, the quality of the product being eaten shapes the impression left behind. A handmade, small-batch bake transfers a very different impression to a mass-produced one — which is why every Bumble & Goose branded product is made by hand rather than mass produced.