Differences in Hedonic Responses, Facial Expressions and Self-Reported Emotions of Consumers Using Commercial Yogurts: A Cross-Cultural Study.

Mitali Gupta,Damir D Torrico,Jeremy J Cottrell,Sally L Gras,Frank R Dunshea,Lydia Ong,Graham Hepworth

doi:10.3390/foods10061237

Abstract

Hedonic scale testing is a well-accepted methodology for assessing consumer perceptions but is compromised by variation in voluntary responses between cultures. Check-all-that-apply (CATA) methods using emotion terms or emojis and facial expression recognition (FER) are emerging as more powerful tools for consumer sensory testing as they may offer improved assessment of voluntary and involuntary responses, respectively. Therefore, this experiment compared traditional hedonic scale responses for overall liking to (1) CATA emotions, (2) CATA emojis and (3) FER. The experiment measured voluntary and involuntary responses from 62 participants of Asian (53%) versus Western (47%) origin, who consumed six divergent yogurt formulations (Greek, drinkable, soy, coconut, berry, cookies). The hedonic scales could discriminate between yogurt formulations but could not distinguish between responses across the cultural groups. Aversive responses to formulations were the easiest to characterize for all methods; the hedonic scale was the only method that could not characterize differences in cultural preferences, with CATA emojis displaying the highest level of discrimination. In conclusion, CATA methods, particularly the use of emojis, showed improved characterization of cross-cultural preferences of yogurt formulations compared to hedonic scales and FER.

Highlights

Sensory analysis is important in the food industry, for product development and to guide marketing decisions [1]
The participants were recruited for the tasting sessions through email invitations and all protocols of this study were approved by the Human Ethics Advisory Group (HEAG) of the Faculty of Veterinary and Agriculture Sciences (FVAS) at the University of Melbourne (Ethics ID 1853507.2)
Conscious and unconscious methods can be combined with a hedonic scale for a better understanding of consumer perceptions

Summary

Introduction

Sensory analysis is important in the food industry, for product development and to guide marketing decisions [1]. The CATA methodology has been effectively used to compare consumer perception and liking of different chocolate milk desserts and beers and has been shown to be an easy and convenient method for understanding consumer behaviors [9,10]. This method has been used to observe cultural differences in terms of word associations with the relative quality criteria of rice consumption [11]. This technique is still considered a self-reported conscious method, because it asks consumers to select options from a list and can show bias

Methods

Results

Conclusion