A flavour of emotions : sensory & emotional profiling of wine, beer and non-alcoholic beer

Abstract

Background Wine and beer are the most consumed alcoholic beverages worldwide and are known by the sensory pleasure and short terms effects such as relaxation and mood enhancement. However, it remains unclear what are the specific emotions evoked by wine or beer consumption. Non-alcoholic beer is considered a healthier beverage, as it does not contain alcohol, but it does not seem to be appealing to consumers since patterns of consumption are marginal compared to wine and beer consumption. One of the challenges in food research is to encourage consumers to adopt healthier choices to reduce life-style problems. Given the importance of moderate alcohol consumption in diet it seems important, from the nutritional perspective, to understand consumers´ perceptions of alcoholic versus non-alcoholic beverages. Aim The aim of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of consumption experience of wine, beer and non-alcoholic beer, and hence beverage choice, by using beverage-evoked emotions, in addition to their sensory perceptions. Methods After a literature review to know the determinants of wine, beer and non-alcoholic beer consumption, we performed a qualitatitve study (n=56) to explore the conceptualisations of the beverages in terms of functional and emotional associations. Following, we studied how the product name “BEER” or “NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER” influenced liking and the emotions elicited, before and after drinking either a beer or a non-alcoholic beer, when the beverages were given to 155 consumers in a bar, named correctly and incorrectly with respect to their composition. In the further studies, we used a dynamic approach, the temporal dominance of sensations and emotions and temporal liking. In one study, two similar tasting commercial wines, were compared by 80 consumers in a bar. In the last study 71 consumers compared three commercial beers that differed only in the intensity of added hop aroma. Results Beer and wine are rich in both functional and emotional conceptualisations. Beer mainly evokes high arousal positive emotions, such as energetic and adventurous. Wine mainly evokes low arousal emotions such as calm and loving. Non-alcoholic beer is a substitute and has negative and neutral emotional associations, such as disappointed and conscious. Therefore, we concluded that wine, beer and non-alcoholic beer have different conceptualisations in consumer´s mind. Drinking a non-alcoholic beer named as “non-alcoholic beer” made consumers feel less excited after drinking. When the same beverage was named “beer”, consumers liked it more and felt more fulfilled. Drinking a beer named as “beer” changed emotional profile towards to a more positive direction since after drinking consumers felt more: fulfilled, exuberant, comforted, amused, joyful, happy and good, and less grumpy. When the same beverage was named “non-alcoholic beer”, the liking did not change but six positive emotions decreased, namely consumers felt less comforted, exuberant, good, happy, joyful and loving. Based on this study we concluded that the product name is at least as important as the flavour, as it influenced emotions and liking. Measuring emotions during consumption, we found that equally liked similar tasting wines evoked the same three dominant emotions in all stages of consumption: pleased, comforted and relaxed. However, these emotions evolved with different trajectories while drinking each wine, allowing a differentiation between wines. Lastly, when the sensory characteristics of a commercial beer were manipulated by adding hop aroma, different sensory profiles were dominant but liking did not change. The temporal dominance of emotions allowed to see that in beginning of consumption of the most aromatic beer there was a shift from negative to positive emotions. In the most aromatic beer only positive emotions were dominant: relaxed, pleased and happy, whereas in the control and in the less aromatic beers besides relaxed or pleased, disappointed was also dominant. Based on this outcome it seems possible to induce different emotion profiles by manipulating the sensory characteristics. Conclusions Wine, beer and non-alcoholic beer have an elaborated conceptualisation map in consumer´s minds and they evoke positive and negative emotions, that evolve during consumption. A balance between functional and emotional conceptualisations seems to be important for product success as well as the product name. During consumption sensations and emotions can evolve differently in similar tasting beverages that consumers equally liked. The relationship between sensory specific characteristics and emotions is still limited but we believe that these practical implications may help industries to create healthier versions of products to be experienced as the happier choices.