Analytic versus holistic: Cognitive styles can influence consumer response and behavior toward foods

Abstract

AbstractWhile there is a growing body of attention to the diversity of cognitive styles among individuals, that has yet to be directly applied to sensory and consumer sciences. This study was aimed at identifying how divergent analytic and holistic cognitive styles can affect individuals' food‐related experiences. Participants were classified into either analytic or holistic cognitive style groups based on their scores on the Analysis‐Holism Scale. Focus group interviews were conducted to identify group differences with respect to three aspects of food‐related experiences: (a) shopping for, (b) preparing, and (c) consuming food. The results revealed that analytic consumers focused more on individual ingredients, separate meal portions, and singular important food attributes, while holistic consumers focused more on overall impressions, entire meal portions, and multiple food attributes as being important. In conclusion, this study sheds lights on how cognitive styles can modulate consumers' food‐related experiences in everyday life.Practical applicationsPrior analytic–holistic research has highlighted how these two consumer groups can exhibit different processing and interpretations of identical situations. By utilizing psychology theory in the applied setting of sensory evaluation, it has been detailed how analytic and holistic groups that co‐exist in a single population can provide significantly different results in response to food samples in everyday life. Analytic–holistic cognitive styles should therefore be taken into consideration when conducting consumer‐oriented sensory evaluation and product development to achieve better understanding of and predict consumer response and behavior toward food products.