Emotion research in sensory and consumer science has gathered significant momentum over recent years and the development of effective emotion measurement methods is a priority in this rapidly growing area.
The aim of this research was to advance the use of consumer-led emotion lexicons by using focus groups to increase the efficiency of lexicon generation and by decreasing the number of consumer response categories. In parallel, the ability of the newly generated reduced lexicon to discriminate emotional response across different gender and age groups, and across sensorially distinct beer samples, was evaluated. The new approach was largely effective at discriminating across samples and revealed significant differences in emotional response between genders and between age groups.
The reduced lexicon was compared to a full lexicon to ascertain their relative efficacies. Whilst there were differences between the two form lengths, neither was convincingly more effective at sample discrimination than the other, although the full form better differentiated between age groups.
The reduced form was also applied to cross-cultural comparisons through the generation of a reduced product-specific consumer-led emotion lexicon in Spain. As in the UK, the approach discriminated well between samples and was able to differentiate between consumer groups. Comparing Spanish and UK responses, ratings of emotions associated with pleasure/pleasantness were similar but there were differences in the use of emotions associated with arousal/engagement/activation. This new methodology was therefore demonstrated to be a valuable tool for investigating cross-cultural emotional response.
The approach developed in this thesis provides researchers with an enhanced consumer-led emotion methodology for use with food and beverages. As well as being relatively quick, the approach has been proven to differentiate between products and reveal differences concerning emotional response across different consumer groups and between cultures. These attributes make this emotional measurement approach extremely valuable to this young research area
