Taking control of product testing context thanks to a multi-sensory immersive room. A case study on alcohol-free beer

Consumer testing away from a sensory facility: Application of home-use test and no-contact home-use test

COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions for approximately three years have heavily influenced sensory evaluations. People have become accustomed to working remotely and communicating online. This has led to opportunities in sensory testing paired with logistics systems and information technologies, resulting in a wide application of the home-use test (HUT), wherein panelists evaluate samples from their homes or other off-site locations. This study aimed to compare three sensory evaluation conditions: a central location test (CLT, n = 104), a HUT (n = 120), and a no-contact HUT (N-HUT, n = 111). We recruited participants via the local community website, delivered samples using a delivery service, and conducted sensory testing using a smartphone for the N-HUT. Participants were requested to report the acceptance ratings, sensory profiles, and emotion responses to four coffee samples. Some differences in the acceptance ratings might be due to the different attitudes participating in the evaluation. In the sensory profiling of the samples, multi-factor analysis (MFA) revealed highly similar sensory characteristics across the three types of tests. All RV coefficients (RVs) among the test conditions were above 0.93. The emotion responses to coffee samples were similar among test conditions based on the MFA with RV values greater than 0.84. In conclusion, we found that N-HUT produced similar results regarding the descriptions of sensory profiles and emotions, indicating that N-HUT is a suitable test method for collecting sensory data and overcoming CLT and HUT's regional limitations. Modern logistics systems and information technologies make it possible to conduct nationwide sensory evaluations without in-person contact or participant attendance at sensory testing facilities.

Encouraging (Nudging) People to Increase Their Fluid Intake

This narrative historical review considers the various routes to nudging consumers towards drinking more, given self-reported evidence that many people are often not adequately hydrated. This review builds on the related notion of 'visual hunger'. Interestingly, however, while many desirable foods are associated with distinctive sensory qualities (such as an appetizing smell), that may capture the consumer's (visual) attention, it is less clear that there is an equivalent sensory attentional capture by hydration-related cues. One of the other important differences between satiety and thirst is that people tend to overconsume if they use interoceptive satiety cues to decide when to stop eating, while the evidence suggests that people typically stop drinking prior to being adequately hydrated. What is more, the increasing amount of time we spend in consistently warm indoor environments may also be exacerbating our need to drink more. A number of concrete suggestions are made concerning how people may be encouraged (or nudged) to imbibe sufficient water.

Effect of perceptive enrichment on the efficiency of simulated contexts: Comparing virtual reality and immersive room settings

This study was designed within the methodological framework of sensory and consumer sciences, where conventionally internal and external validity are approached separately (e.g. CLT vs HUT). Here is explored the added value of new immersive strategies, such as virtual reality, on their ability to achieve both: internal and external validity. This article presents a comparative study between different experimental setups, involving more than 270 consumers. Two different immersive setups were appraised, simulating the consumption episode 'eating a sandwich for lunch in a park': a context room (N = 57) and a VR environment (N = 55). We added two control conditions: a real park in summer (N = 56) and scenario-only in sensory booths (duplicated condition, N1 = 59, N2 = 52). A set of sandwiches were evaluated in a between-participants design, with one duplicated recipe for a reliability assessment. Participants evaluated samples on hedonic criteria and closed the experiment with a questionnaire measuring their level of immersion. After classification of the questionnaire variables, seven underlying dimensions were identified, with significant differences between conditions on the credibility of the environment and the scenario. As expected, with strong external validity, the simulated environments were more immersive than the conventional booth with scenario and less immersive than a real-life environment. Although the immersive conditions did not stand out from the other conditions on the product evaluation performance, all the conditions revealed a high level of internal validity. Mean scores and rankings of the products, participants' repeatability and discriminatory power remained comparable to the real park environment indices.

Alcohol-free and low-alcohol beers: Aroma chemistry and sensory characteristics

Alcohol-free beers have gained popularity in the last few decades because they provide a healthier alternative to alcoholic beers and can be more widely consumed. Consumers are becoming more aware of the benefits of reducing their alcohol consumption, and this has increased the sales of nonalcoholic alternatives. However, there are still many challenges for the brewing industry to produce an alcohol-free beer that resembles the pleasant fruity flavor and overall sensory experience of regular beers. The aim of this review is to give a comprehensive overview of alcohol-free beer focusing on aroma chemistry. The formation of the most important aroma compounds, such as Strecker aldehydes, higher alcohols, and esters, is reviewed, aiming to outline the gaps in current knowledge. The role of ethanol as a direct and indirect flavor-active compound is examined separately. In parallel, the influence of the most common methods to reduce alcohol content, such as physical (dealcoholization) or biological, on the organoleptic characteristics and consumer perception of the final product, is discussed.

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.

An Overview of Sensory Characterization Techniques: From Classical Descriptive Analysis to the Emergence of Novel Profiling Methods

Sensory science provides objective information about the consumer understanding of a product, the acceptance or rejection of stimuli, and the description of the emotions evoked. It is possible to answer how consumers perceive a product through discriminative and descriptive techniques. However, perception can change over time, and these fluctuations can be measured with time-intensity methods. Instrumental sensory devices and immersive techniques are gaining headway as sensory profiling techniques. The authors of this paper critically review sensory techniques from classical descriptive analysis to the emergence of novel profiling methods. Though research has been done in the creation of new sensory methods and comparison of those methods, little attention has been given to the timeline approach and its advantages and challenges. This study aimed to gather, explain, simplify, and discuss the evolution of sensory techniques.

A narrative review of the impact of digital immersive technology on affective and sensory responses during product testing in digital eating contexts

The environments and/or contexts typically used to determine consumer affective and sensory responses have been questioned for their ecological validity. However, conducting consumer testing in real-life scenarios is costly, logistically complex, and hard to standardise between participants due to a lack of control over external cues and product preparation. Immersive environments, representative of product consumption contexts, may provide more ecologically valid data. Recently, digital immersion technologies have been proposed to contextualise consumer studies whilst maintaining experimental control. This narrative review summarised published consumer studies including digital immersion in addition to traditional sensory booths and/or a real-life immersive contexts in their study design, to measure the impact of these contexts on liking, emotional response and intensity of sensory attributes. The findings suggest that emotional response ratings are more comparable to real-life, and that consumer engagement and reliability increases, when testing is conducted using digital immersive techniques compared to traditional sensory booths. Therefore, digital immersive techniques look promising to improve ecological validity of consumer testing, but further development and research is required.

Food Consumption and Emotions at a Salad Lunch Buffet in a Multisensory Environment

The food experience is multisensory and multisensory external stimuli may affect food choice and emotions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a multisensory eating environment on food choice, intake and the emotional states of the subjects in a salad lunch buffet setting. A total of 30 female subjects consumed a salad lunch twice in the multisensory laboratory. The two test conditions (control and multisensory condition with environmental stimuli) were randomized and the visits were scheduled one week apart. Subjects selected and ate a meal from a salad buffet including 14 food items and the intake of each item was weighed. They answered an online questionnaire about the meal and their emotional states (20 different emotion terms) after the lunch. There was no significant difference in the food consumption between the control and multisensory conditions. The subjects were very satisfied with their lunch for both study visits but the pleasantness of the eating environment was rated higher under the multisensory condition. In emotional terms, the subjects selected the term "happy" significantly more frequently under the multisensory condition compared with the control. In conclusion, the multisensory eating environment in this study was not related to food intake but may be associated with positive emotions. The effect of the eating environment on food choice and experience deserves further study with a larger study population in a real lunch restaurant setting.

Factors influencing the choice of beer: A review

Research on those variables that have been shown to influence the consumer's choice of beer is reviewed. The focus is on the choice of whether to drink beer as opposed to a beverage from another category, and to a greater extent, the choice between different types or styles of beer. Inspired by previous research on a diverse array of factors that have been shown to influence food and beverage choice, the review examines how beer choice is driven by consumer variables (covering biological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors), product-intrinsic attributes (the sensory aspects of the beer itself), product-extrinsic attributes (external sensory characteristics, such as packaging), and contextual and environmental influences. These situational factors refer to variables such as the location where choice/consumption takes place (i.e., on- versus off-trade), as well as the context, occasion, and reason for drinking. Current trends related to choice and consumption, such as the emerging interest in beer-food pairing, are also examined. The review groups these attributes which affect people's beer wanting, choice, and purchase in order to understand the beer consumer's choice process. Along with general conclusions, a number of key directions for future research are also presented, given that the relative contribution of each type of factor on consumer's choice behaviour is still unclear.

An unfamiliar social presence reduces facial disgust responses to food stimuli

Consumers' emotional responses complement sensory and hedonic ratings in the prediction of food choice and consumption behaviour. The challenge with the measurement of consumption emotions is that emotions are highly context dependent. For emotion evaluations to bring greater insight to food research and development, it is essential that the influence of contextual variables on emotion are quantified. The present study contributes to the discussion with an investigation of the effect of an unfamiliar social presence on affective facial responses to visual food stimuli. Seventy participants (52 female and 18 male) viewed food images of varying acceptability either alone, or in the presence of the researcher. Subjective liking ratings were measured using a labelled affective magnitude scale, and facial muscle activity from zygomaticus major (contracted during smiling), corrugator supercilii (contracted during frowning) and levator labii superioris (contracted during nose wrinkling) were measured with an EMG recording system. Controlling for individual differences in facial expressivity and food image acceptability using linear mixed models, it was found that social context did not predict smiling or frowning muscle activity. Social context did predict the intensity of muscle activity indicative of a disgust response, with participants in the observed condition exhibiting less levator activity than participants in the alone condition. Regardless of social context, each muscle was found to have a relationship with subjective liking, with the direction of effects as expected. The results indicate that emotional stimuli and social context both influence food-evoked facial expression and provides support for the utility of facial EMG in measuring food-evoked emotion.