Hedonic Measurements Research Articles

Proximity to Neighborhood Services and Property Values in Urban Area: An Evaluation through the Hedonic Pricing Model

Neighborhood services, property attributes, and their associated amenities have positive impacts on land and property values. This impact is estimated by the hedonic pricing model, which is considered an effective method used in previous studies for such evaluations. The study uses Geographical Information Science by digitizing the point of interest in the study area for spatial modeling of data collection points and multi-linear regression as a statistical analysis of hedonic measurements. The hedonic measurements include the data of structural, locational, environmental, and community attributes of a property at a given time and space at a walkable distance from the neighborhood for measuring proximity. The results of the study are represented through the summary of the regression model, which expresses the impact of every individual variable on the entire value of the property, and the appropriateness of the results is shown by values R, R2, and adjusted R2. The result of the study concluded that property characteristics are varied from location to location, and that is why it is difficult to measure the exact market values, particularly in areas that lack urban planning and heterogeneous data. Research on such burning issues is essential for sustainable urban development.

Consumer Studies: Beyond Acceptability—A Case Study with Beer

Beer is one of the most consumed alcoholic beverages in the world; its consumption and preference are evolving from traditional industrial beers of low complexity to novel craft beers with diverse flavour profiles. In such a competitive industry and considering the complexity of consumer behaviour, improvement and innovation become necessary. Consequently, consumer science, which is responsible for identifying the motivation behind customer preferences through their attitudes, perception and behaviour, has implemented strategies ranging from simple hedonic measurements to several innovative and emerging methodologies for a deeper understanding of the variables that affect the product experience: sensory, affective and cognitive. In this context, we offer a review inspired by previous research that explores some of the quantitative and qualitative methods used in consumer studies related to beer consumption, ranging from traditional approaches (acceptability, purchase intention, preference, etc.) to techniques that go beyond acceptability and allow a different understanding of aspects of consumer perception and behaviour (segmentation, expectations, emotions, representation, etc.). Also, innovative applications (contexts, immersive technologies and virtual reality, implicit measures, etc.) and current trends related to consumer science (Internet, social media, pairing, product experience, etc.) are addressed.

Hedonic response sensitivity to variations in the evaluation task and culinary preparation in a natural consumption context.

Hedonic measurements in the frame of consumer tests of foods are prone to many different biases and the validity of test designs has been subject to much research with special emphasis on the role of context. While bringing elements of natural consumption context to the testing conditions is generally seen as an improvement, other aspects of the test design such as the task format have received little attention. In particular, the influence of analytical questions on hedonic responses has been studied in standardized contexts only. This study aimed to assess whether synthetic and analytical evaluation tasks result in different hedonic responses when the test is conducted in a natural consumption context. Bread and pizzas with different degrees of culinary preparation (homemade, readymade, and a combination of the two) were tested on three separate days in a university cafeteria. Overall liking scores of the bread and the three different pizzas were obtained either with a synthetic (hedonic question only) or with an analytical task (hedonic question plus intensity attributes). Care was taken to avoid any other changes to normal eating conditions, notably by recruiting on the spot only those customers who had spontaneously chosen pizza as part of their lunch. Liking scores of the homemade pizza were lower with the analytical task while the scores of the other two pizzas did not change significantly. Moreover, different rankings of the pizzas were obtained when the data were analyzed separately for each evaluation task format. The synthetic evaluation task would have led to the conclusion that the homemade pizza was the best liked and the readymade being the least liked, while the analytical evaluation task would have led to the conclusion that the "mixed" pizza would be liked significantly more than the other two. The effect of the task format (i.e., lower scores with the analytical task) was more pronounced when participants reported they had spent more time in the queue. These results strengthen the view that the task is part of the evaluation context and must be carefully considered when one wishes to design ecologically valid consumer tests.

Erring Experts? A Critique of Wine Ratings as Hedonic Scaling

AbstractConsumers use expert ratings to help choose wine, and economists find correlations between ratings and transaction prices. Rating scales resemble hedonic scales in the behavioral sciences, which suffer from an “intersubjectivity” problem. Taste is a private sensation; people taste differently (an external validity problem), so ratings are often unreliable hedonic markers of enjoyment. But why? Hedonic measurements from food science (“general Labeled Magnitude Scales”) attempt to adjust for differences in perceived sensory sensitivity and offer clues. Resulting insights illustrate wine ratings’ shortcomings as reliable guides to enjoyment. (JEL Classifications: C14, D12, D91, L15, L66)

Sweet Taste as a Predictor of Dietary Intake: A Systematic Review.

Taste is frequently cited as an important factor in food choice, and while a number of studies have attempted to identify relationships between taste function and dietary intake, a systematic review of these studies has been lacking. This review identified studies that examined associations between taste function or taste perception and dietary intake. The purpose was to determine which taste measure was most closely associated with dietary intake in healthy adults. Studies that measured some component of dietary intake, either acutely or longer-term, were eligible for inclusion. Studies were grouped into three categories: those that measured sensitivity (thresholds), intensity, or hedonic responses to sweet stimuli. Sensitivity and intensity studies demonstrated little association with dietary intake measures. Hedonic measurements were more likely to be associated with dietary intake, especially if sweet likers were analyzed separately from sweet dislikers, but the degree of heterogeneity among stimulus concentrations and dietary measures as well as small sample sizes likely obscured more consistent relationships between hedonic evaluation and dietary intake. Due to the potential for within-day and between-day variability in both taste function and dietary intake, future work should explore obtaining more than one taste measurement before comparing results to longer-term dietary assessments and attempts to standardize methods.

Emoji as a tool for measuring children’s emotions when tasting food

Consumers’ emotional evaluation of food products has gathered interest among sensory scientists and food companies as a means to gain additional insights beyond hedonic measurements. While recent work shows that emotional profiling can also be performed with children and teenagers, concerns have been raised about the validity of emotional profiling when using traditional questionnaires, especially with children. Emoji have recently been proposed as an alternative approach, but empirical studies with this target group are scarce.Using 5 different samples of a biscuit (‘speculoos’), this study evaluates the use of emoji for emotional profiling with 149 children (11–13 years old). Overall liking and emotional profiling (with 33 emoji) were assessed for each sample, using the check-all-that-apply approach. Children’s actual food choice was also recorded.Results showed that, on average, 10% of the emoji were selected for each sample. The emoji were able to discriminate between the products, while less discrimination was obtained between hedonically similar samples. Also, results indicated that some emoji responses were influenced by consumption frequency. Furthermore, this study found that adding emoji measurements improves food choice prediction compared to the sole inclusion of overall liking measurements.This study suggests that emoji can be used as an alternative means of emotional profiling with children and their inclusion helps to better predict actual food choice. More research is needed to examine the use of emoji in sensory research with children, especially regarding the selection and number of emoji.

Comparison of response formats and concurrent hedonic measures for optimal use of the EmoSensory® Wheel

The study of emotional and sensory profiling with food products is gaining momentum in the field of sensory research. These methods can be applied in order to obtain a broader consumer perspective on product performance beyond traditional hedonic measurements (Jiang, King, & Prinyawiwatkul, 2014; Varela & Ares, 2012). The EmoSensory® Wheel, a recently introduced method which combines emotional and sensory assessment in a wheel questionnaire format is one example of conducting such a task in a consumer-friendly way. However, little is known about its performance compared to a traditional list-based questionnaire format. This comparison is undertaken in this study for two product categories (chocolate and yogurt). Further, two methodological issues are addressed by (i) comparing the use of Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) and rate-all-that-apply (RATA) response formats and (ii) examining whether the method impacts on the concurrent hedonic product assessment for two product categories (chocolate and yogurt). Although both questionnaire formats showed similar findings, more consumers preferred the wheel questionnaire format. Regarding the latter, CATA and RATA scaling yielded similar performance and no influence on the concurrent hedonic assessment was found. This study lends further support for combining emotional and sensory measurements using the EmoSensory® profile, which is of interest for food scientists and the food industry.

What do we learn from comparing hedonic scores and willingness-to-pay data?

Consumer preferences for different variants of a given food product can be directly obtained with hedonic measurements or revealed with willingness-to-pay measurements. The aim of this paper is to present a comparison of the data collected using these two types of measurements on four data sets collected in our laboratory for different food products (bread, cooked ham, cheese and orange juice). This comparison was conducted at two levels (global and individual) and was based on two criteria: discrimination between variants and consistency in variant ranking. For the four data sets, hedonic measurements and willingness-to-pay measurements were collected for each participant in a ‘full information’ condition, i.e. in a condition where participants tasted each variant associated with extrinsic information. To reveal consumer willingness-to-pay, the BDM mechanism was used (Becker, DeGroot, & Marschak, 1964), which consists in real sales at a random price. Aggregate results were similar for the two measurements. In addition, in two out of four studies, willingness-to-pay measurements led to slightly higher discrimination between variants than hedonic measurements. At the individual level, more inconsistencies were found. This result is in line with previous studies. Nevertheless, participants were more consistent concerning the most-liked variant than concerning the least-liked variant. Our results also showed that hedonic score distributions did not reveal any cut-off point below which consumers chose the no-purchase option; this cut-off point largely depended on individuals and products.

Comparison of Oils Originating from Olive Fruit by Different Production Systems

AbstractIn this study eight olive oil samples produced in different processing systems were analyzed and compared. It was shown that extended processing systems tend to result in lower quality oil. Slight differences were observed among the virgin classes of the samples. The antique process sample had higher phenolics content, bitterness, throat catching, and lower values of positive sensory terms. It was shown that the second decantation oil was lower in almost all quality criteria and truly is a lampante, non‐food use sample. Quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) of the samples has indicated that positively defined terms were higher in the virgin class of the samples than the refined class of the samples. But consumer hedonic measurements did not differentiate the samples. Buying intentions of the refined samples were as high as the values for the virgin samples. Models of consumer buying intentions included appearance and flavor as significant factors. Multidimensional scale analyses of data have shown that olive oils can be grouped successfully by common quality and sensory parameters.

FLAVOR DIFFERENCES IN HETEROGENEOUS FOODS CAN BE DETECTED USING REPEATED MEASURES OF CONSUMER PREFERENCES

ABSTRACT A method in which repeated hedonic measurements are used to infer flavor differences was proposed and tested using kiwifruit. Consumers assessed kiwifruit that had been treated with 1‐methylcyclopropane (1‐MCP, SmartFresh, AgroFresh Inc., Philadelphia, PA), a product used to manage the rate of ripening of fruits. Each consumer tasted four pairs of kiwifruit represented by a 2 × 2 design (high and low sugar content by soft and firm texture), and each pair of fruit included a 1‐MCP‐treated and control kiwifruit. Significant differences in consumer liking were found for kiwifruit with higher sugar content and firmer textures (two factors that were included as positive controls for panel sensitivity). However, no significant differences in liking were found between 1‐MCP and control kiwifruit. The repeated measures of preference for pairs of kiwifruit were subjected to analysis of probability, which confirmed that preferences for and against 1‐MCP were no different from the simple probability of tossing a coin four times. It was concluded that 1‐MCP did not affect the flavor of kiwifruit, and any preference expressed by consumers for or against 1‐MCP‐treated kiwifruit was due to other factors associated with biological variability in fruit quality.PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSThis consumer method is presented for consideration and further evaluation. It is recommended as a useful addition to those currently available for assessing heterogeneous foods. In addition to providing information on liking scores and consumer preferences, it allows inferences to be made about the existence of qualitative differences in flavor.

Consumer and instrumental evaluation of Maine wild blueberries for the fresh pack market

Maine wild blueberries prepared for the fresh pack market compete with cultivated blueberries for market share. In an effort to increase market share, Maine producers are seeking an understanding of consumer preference and how it relates to objective blueberry quality measures. Consumer and instrumental measurements were evaluated over a 3-year period from 1996 to 1998. Freshly harvested blueberries were sized according to diameter; 6–8, 9–10 and 11–12 mm. A consumer panel, recruited from the university and surrounding communities, ranged in age from 18 to 62 and was geographically and gender diverse. The panel was presented the various size classes of blueberries monadically in balanced random order and asked to rate the samples on a nine-point hedonic scale. Quasi-static compression measurements of firmness were paired with these individual sensory measurements. Statistical regression models and back propagation neural networks were used to determine and predict consumer response from the instrumental response. There seemed to be a compression of the consumer data to the upper end of the hedonic scale. Year and time of season were significant for the overall consumer response and the force and firmness instrumental measurements. Berry size was significant with respect to all sensory and instrumental measurements. The results of the overall sensory and instrumental evaluation revealed that size class 9–10 mm was the ideal size for fresh market selection, however, panelists preferred the large (11–12 mm) berries in visual acceptance evaluations. The statistical regression analysis revealed no linear relationships except for the size class 9–10 mm, where positive linear relationships were found between sensory and instrumental measurements. The neural networks were poor predictors of the sensory data based on the instrumental data. These findings highlight the difficulties in characterizing consumer preference with instrumental and hedonic measurements.

Current practice in relating sensory perception to instrumental measurements

Some flaws and difficulties in the current usage and methodologies for relating sensory to physico-chemical measurements are outlined and discussed. Preference mapping is proposed to pre-process hedonic measurements. Analysis of variance, Generalised Procrustes or Cluster Analysis are recommended for pre-processing sensory data. The pros and cons of a series of statistical tools, including multiple regression, principal component regression, partial least squares, canonical correlation and redundancy analysis, are discussed briefly. Finally the potential of non-linear extensions are illustrated.

EVALUATION OF THREE SCALING METHODS FOR HEDONICS

ABSTRACTA collaborative study of twenty‐three laboratories was conducted to compare the relative effectiveness of three scales: two forms of magnitude estimation scaling and one form of a category scale in the measurement of hedonic response to a controlled stimulus. Responses from 553 individual judges show that all scales yield hedonic measurements that are very similar in both direction and magnitude of difference between the stimuli. No scale showed any clear superiority in reliability, precision, or discrimination. Selection of a scale must be based on considerations other than the simple form of response.