How do you feel when you smell this? Optimization of a verbal measurement of odor-elicited emotions

Abstract

The Geneva Emotion and Odor Scale (GEOS) was developed to measure the subjective affective experience (i.e., feeling) elicited by everyday odors. This study aimed to adapt the GEOS to commercial and development needs and had a threefold objective: (i) to verify whether the number of measurement terms in the GEOS questionnaire could be reduced; (ii) to investigate the suitability of this new questionnaire to differentiate the feelings evoked by the odors of different fragranced and flavored products; and (iii) to verify whether the measurement of feelings with this tool could add information to more traditional consumer liking measures. The original and modified questionnaires yielded comparable results for different shampoos. Results of characterizing various product categories with the new questionnaire indicated that it is relevant to differentiate the feelings evoked by odors from fragranced and flavored products, which can be perceptually distinct or similar. In addition, the verbal measurement of feelings provides insight into consumer liking, improving the discrimination of products that have similar liking scores.