Photograph Based Evaluation of Consumer Expectation on Healthiness, Fullness, and Acceptance of Sandwiches as Convenience Food.

Purificación García-Segovia,Mª Jesús Pagán-Moreno,Amparo Tárrega,Javier Martínez-Monzó

doi:10.3390/foods10051102

Abstract

Sandwiches are the most common “casual-food” consumed by all age groups in Spain. Due to the importance of visual appearance to promote unplanned or impulse buying, foodservice and hospitality companies focus on improving the visual impression of their food menus to create an expectation that satisfies both sensory and hedonic consumer experiences. To provide a list of attributes about the visual appearance of sandwiches, 25 students were recruited from a university and were invited to participate in two nominal group technique (NGT) sessions. To understand whether a sandwiches’ appearance can influence the expectation of consumers, 259 participants completed an online survey specially designed from the results of the NGT sessions. Data were analyzed using conjoint, internal preference mapping and cluster analysis; the interaction effect by gender was also studied. The conjoint results indicate that visual perception about the filling (vegetal or pork based) plays the most key role overall in consumer expectation. When consumers choose vegetables as the filling, the consumers’ perceived sandwiches as healthier, but the pork filling was perceived as more attractive and satiating. Interaction effect by gender was observed in filling when females perceived pork filling as less healthy than vegetable. By acceptance, consumers were segmented into three groups. The first cluster (n = 80) selected the pork filling. The smaller group (cluster 3, n = 36) prioritized the vegetal filling, and the most numerous cluster 2 (n = 140) liked sandwiches with multigrain bread. These results may help companies to build tailor-made marketing strategies to satisfy consumer segments.

Highlights

Food choice is a complex process that influences consumers’ nutrient intake in a food company’s new product development [1,2]
People’s food choices are conditioned by previous individual experiences, and culturally shared expectations created on foods
Automatic, and emotional, whereas rational thinking is a slow, effortful, and controlled process [2,5]. Aspects such as food price and health claims can be considered as rational thinking whereas factors such as purchase environment, promotion, packaging, and mood are related to an impulse or intuitive purchase [6,7]

Summary

Introduction

Food choice is a complex process that influences consumers’ nutrient intake in a food company’s new product development [1,2]. The hedonic response to how a new food is perceived will depend on the divergence between the sensory attributes and the prior expectations, and on other inherent factors from the consumer [3]. These expectations may influence decisions about ingredients, portion size, food type, and nutritional properties. Miao and Mattila [11] studied what food motive (health or indulgence) influence consumers’ impulse buying behavior. Their results suggested that people prioritized emotional needs (“feel good”) versus primary needs (“feel healthy”). The effect of gender differences in diet and social media [12] and online cooking [13] has been investigated to provide food recommendations taking into account these differences and to know how gender differences impact in the field of diet, cooking, internet, and food preferences

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Conclusion