Information and context effects on consumers' food experience

Although scientists and industry apply sensory evaluation techniques to better understand and predict consumers’ product choice, 80 to 90% of new food products fail in the market. A possible explanation lies in the fact that consumers’ contribution in traditional sensory research is merely limited to the assessment of their overall liking on blind-labelled products performed in a controlled lab context. As a first step, this doctoral thesis examines the combination of emotional and sensory profiling by consumers for obtaining a better view on consumers’ food product experience. In order to facilitate such measurements, a new tool called the EmoSensory® Wheel has been developed and validated in this PhD. Secondly, three case studies were performed to study the impact of information and context on consumers’ food experience measured by this new tool. The first case study investigated the influence of health-related labels. The impact of content information (insect/vegetarian/meat) was examined in the second study. Lastly, the third case study explored the effect of brand information and context. The results illustrated the added value of including both emotional and sensory profiling tasks by consumers. Further, the case studies showed that the potential impact of the food stimuli presentation and context should be considered when setting up and interpreting results while conducting sensory research

Do fair trade labels bias consumers' perceptions of food products? A comparison between a central location test and home-use test

Consumers are paying more and more attention to ethical and social criteria during grocery shopping. As a result, Fair Trade products which are certified to address global supply chain issues (e.g., forced labor, working conditions, fair pay), are gaining popularity. However, it is unclear to which extent Fair Trade labels might influence how consumers perceive such labelled food products. The aim of this research was to examine the potential effect of Fair Trade labels on several measurements (overall liking, sensory profiling, emotions, willingness-to-pay and kCal estimations). Furthermore, tests were carried out at a sensory lab and at home to examine if the evaluation context might impact the label effect. In total, 179 consumers participated in this study of which 90 carried out the test in the sensory test facilities (central location test-CLT) and 89 at home (home-use-test-HUT). Participants evaluated three pairs of food products (nuts, juice and chocolate) of which one was labelled as conventional and the other one as Fair Trade. However, participants were each time evaluating the same Fair Trade product. Results showed that the Fair Trade label increased the overall liking. For the juice and chocolate, a higher willingness-to-pay was found when the product was labelled as 'Fair Trade' while no effect of the label was established for the nuts. The Fair Trade label did not affect the kcal estimation of the samples. The Fair Trade label had a rather limited influence on the sensory and emotional profiling of the food products. Furthermore, the results of the CLT and HUT were highly similar indicating that the evaluation context has little impact on the labelling effect

The impact of calorie and physical activity labelling on consumer’s emo-sensory perceptions and food choices

Providing labelling information is one of the strategies used to help consumers make healthier choices. However, although the type of information has the potential to assist consumers, it is important to evaluate their sensory and emotional perceptions. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of different labelling information on consumers' sensory and emotional perceptions and their choices, for three different products (potato chips, juice and yogurt). A total of 480 participants were randomly assigned to one of four information conditions (no information (blind), kilocalorie (kcal) information, physical activity (PA) information [duration of walking required to burn the kcal in the product], kcal + PA information). For each information condition, participants were provided with higher kcal and lower kcal equivalent food pairs and were required to choose one. The participants evaluated their overall liking using a 9-point hedonic scale and answered rate-all-thatapply (RATA) questions related to the sensory and emotional characteristics of the products. The results showed no significant impact of calorie and physical activity labelling on consumers' overall liking for juice and yogurt samples and no impact of PA information for chips. Significant differences in overall liking were found when comparing the blind condition with kcal and kcal + PA information, with lower acceptance of the chips samples when this information was presented. Although providing calorie and physical activity labelling had little impact on consumers' sensory and emotional perceptions, consumers perceived unhealthy attributes and negative emotions, such as fatty and guilty, when information was presented. The present work suggests that, although nutrition labelling may be presented as an important strategy to assist consumers, it is important to evaluate consumers' lifestyles, considering that non-dieters and those low and moderate in dietary restraint may not be impacted by this information

Comparing a product-specific versus a general emoji list to measure consumers’ emotional associations with chocolate and predict food choice

Emoji have been proposed as a way to get additional insights in how consumers perceive food products. Recent works have indicated that emoji are able to provide distinctive emotional associations with food products, regardless of whether one is using the check-all-that-apply (CATA) or the rate-all-that-apply (RATA) scaling approach. Typically, in examining emotional associations one can work with either a general list which can be used with all food products or a product-specific emotion list. To date, a comparison between the performance of a general and product-specific emoji list with adults is lacking. Moreover, it is unclear to which extent emotional data of emoji help to better predict the actual food choice of adult consumers. Using five samples of chocolates, this study compared the use of a general list of 39 emoji with a product-specific list of 20 emoji (based upon input of 32 consumers). In total, 138 consumers assessed the samples using the general list while 136 consumers evaluated the samples with the product-specific emoji list. The RATA approach was used for the evaluation of the samples and the actual food choice was registered as participants received a snack portion of the chosen sample to take home. Results indicated that, considering the frequency of selection, 10 emoji discriminated between the samples for both the general and product-specific lists. Similar results were obtained when considering the rating intensities. Including emoji did not lead to a significant increase in the food choice prediction regardless the type of list used. However, emoji data obtained from the product-specific emoji list was able to predict the food choice as accurate as the liking data when using the RATA intensity scores. This study suggests that both general and product-specific emoji lists are able to generate distinguishing emotional profiles for chocolate samples. While further research is necessary with other food products and measurement methods (e.g. CATA), this study proposes that emoji measurements might be an alternative to liking data in order to be better understand of consumers’ food choice.acceptedVersio