Differences in Hedonic Responses, Facial Expressions and Self-Reported Emotions of Consumers Using Commercial Yogurts: A Cross-Cultural Study

Analytic-holistic cognitive styles affect consumer responses to food and beverage samples during sensory evaluation

Recent studies have shown that the analytic-holistic theory is applicable in sensory science-related areas. Analytic and holistic cognitive style groups have been found to have significantly different perceptions and behaviors within food-related scenarios. These differences were further investigated and identified within the current study, focusing on specific areas of common sensory tests and analyses where analytic and holistic cognitive style groups may differ from one another. Before the main study, 419 volunteers were classified into three groups based on their scores to the Analysis-Holism Scale (AHS). The extreme groups (65 adults for each) were identified as the "analytic" and "holistic" cognitive style groups, respectively. Participants evaluated fruit-flavored beverages and fruit samples for their impression of the intensity or hedonic aspects in the study conducted over two sessions. Each session either employed solely category or line scale for the questions. Analyses focused on the analytic and holistic group comparisons in mean, variance, penalty analysis, and pre- and post-AHS score differences. Results showed that the holistic group exhibited significantly higher mean scores and standard deviations in the hedonic ratings of fruit samples than the analytic group did. Compared to the analytic group, the holistic group showed significantly smaller mean drops in overall liking across the five Just-About-Right (JAR) questions related to flavors or tastes of the mixed-fruit flavored water. A significant difference between the AHS scores measured before and after the sensory evaluation was observed in the holistic group, but not in the analytic group. In conclusion, our findings provide empirical evidence that cognitive styles affect consumer responses to food or beverage samples during sensory evaluation tasks. This implies that sensory professionals may consider these analytic-holistic contrasts while exploring consumer responses to their target samples.

Understanding consumer liking of beef patties with different firmness among younger and older adults using FaceReader™ and biometrics

Sensorial perceptions change as people age and biometrics analysis can be used to explore the unconscious consumer responses. Investigation was conducted of effects of consumer age (younger, 22-52 years; older, 60-76 years) on facial expression response (FER) during consumption of beef patties with varying firmness (soft, medium, hard) and taste (±plum sauce). Video images were collected and FERs analysed using FaceReader™. Younger people exhibited higher intensity for happy/sad/scared and lower intensity for neutral/disgusted, relative to older people. Interactions between age and texture/sauce showed little FER variation in older people, whereas younger people showed considerable FER variation. Younger people, but not older people, had lowest intensity of happy FER and highest intensity of angry FER for the hard patty. Sauce addition resulted in higher intensity of happy/contempt in younger consumers, but not older consumers. FER collected using FaceReader™ was successfully used to differentiate between the unconscious responses of younger and older consumers.

Development and validation of a food-related analysis-holism scale (F-AHS)

Recent studies have indicated analytic-holistic cognitive style differences of consumers can significantly impact perceptions, opinions, and behaviors toward foods. Interestingly, these studies have also offered evidence that the sole measurement tool to assess analytic-holistic tendencies, the analysis-holism scale (AHS), may not accurately apply to food-experience-related research scenarios. Due to these notions, Studies 1 and 2 employed the use of 465 and 487 participants, respectively, to develop, refine, and finalize a food-related AHS (F-AHS) using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and prior research on analytic-holistic differences and scale development. Study 3 was conducted to validate the newly developed F-AHS, based on the results of Studies 1 and 2, by replicating the procedures and analyses from prior research while using the F-AHS instead of the AHS to segment participants (N = 130). The results of Study 3 provided consistent evidence that the F-AHS better separated participants into analytic and holistic groups than the AHS through larger analytic-holistic differences that more closely aligned with prior analytic-holistic research. Our findings showed that the F-AHS is capable of separating consumers into analytic and holistic cognitive style groups and is better suited to sensory and consumer-related applications than the AHS. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Our findings provide researchers with an optimized tool to separate consumers into analytic and holistic groups in food-experience-related situations. The food-related analysis-holism scale can then be used in both academia and industry to separate consumers based on cognitive style to better understand how and why consumers show variations in perception, acceptance, and behavior in food-related experiences.

Digital technologies to assess yoghurt quality traits and consumers acceptability

BACKGROUND

Sensory biometrics provide advantages for consumer tasting by quantifying physiological changes and the emotional response from participants, removing variability associated with self-reported responses. The present study aimed to measure consumers' emotional and physiological responses towards different commercial yoghurts, including dairy and plant-based yoghurts. The physiochemical properties of these products were also measured and linked with consumer responses.

RESULTS

Six samples (Control, Coconut, Soy, Berry, Cookies and Drinkable) were evaluated for overall liking by n = 62 consumers using a nine-point hedonic scale. Videos from participants were recorded using the Bio-Sensory application during tasting to assess emotions and heart rate. Physicochemical parameters Brix, pH, density, color (L, a and b), firmness and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy were also measured. Principal component analysis and a correlation matrix were used to assess relationships between the measured parameters. Heart rate was positively related to firmness, yaw head movement and overall liking, which were further associated with the Cookies sample. Two machine learning regression models were developed using (i) NIR absorbance values as inputs to predict the physicochemical parameters (Model 1) and (ii) the outputs from Model 1 as inputs to predict consumers overall liking (Model 2). Both models presented very high accuracy (Model 1: R = 0.98; Model 2: R = 0.99).

CONCLUSION

The presented methods were shown to be highly accurate and reliable with respect to their potential use by the industry to assess yoghurt quality traits and acceptability. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

You Eat How You Think: A Review on the Impact of Cognitive Styles on Food Perception and Behavior

Sensory perception is understood to be a complex area of research that requires investigations from a variety of different perspectives. Although researchers have tried to better understand consumers’ perception of food, one area that has been minimally explored is how psychological cognitive theories can help them explain consumer perceptions, behaviors, and decisions in food-related experiences. The concept of cognitive styles has existed for nearly a century, with the majority of cognitive style theories existing along a continuum with two bookends. Some of the more common theories such as individualist-collectivist, left-brain-right-brain, and convergent-divergent theories each offered their own unique insight into better understanding consumer behavior. However, these theories often focused only on niche applications or on specific aspects of cognition. More recently, the analytic-holistic cognitive style theory was developed to encompass many of these prior theoretical components and apply them to more general cognitive tendencies of individuals. Through applying the analytic-holistic theory and focusing on modern cultural psychology work, this review may allow researchers to be able to answer one of the paramount questions of sensory and consumer sciences: how and why do consumers perceive and respond to food stimuli the way that they do?

Linking Temporal Dominance of Sensations for Primary-Sensory and Multi-Sensory Attributes Using Canonical Correlation Analysis

Sensory responses dynamically change while eating foods. Temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) methods record temporal evolution and have attracted attention in the last decade. ISO 13299 recommends that different levels of attributes are investigated in separate TDS trials. However, only a few studies have attempted to link the dynamics of two different levels of sensory attributes. We propose a method to link the concurrent values of dominance proportions for primary- and multi-sensory attributes using canonical correlation analysis. First, panels categorized several attributes into primary- and multi-sensory attributes. Primary-sensory attributes included sweet, sour, fruity, green, watery, juicy, aromatic, and light. Multi-sensory attributes included refreshing, fresh, pleasurable, rich/deep, ripe, and mild. We applied the TDS methods to strawberries using these two categories of attributes. The obtained canonical correlation model reasonably represented the relationship between the sensations in a reductive manner using five latent variables. The latent variables couple multiple primary- and multi-sensory responses that covary. Hence, the latent variables suggest key components to comprehend food intake experiences. We further compared the model based on the dominance proportions and the time-derivatives of the dominance proportions. We found that the former model was better in terms of the ease of interpreting the canonical variables and the degree to which the canonical variables explain the dominance proportions. Thus, these models help understand and leverage the sensory values of food products.

Novel Techniques to Measure the Sensory, Emotional, and Physiological Responses of Consumers toward Foods

Sensory science is an evolving field that has been incorporating technologies from different disciplines [...].

Application of Augmented Reality in the Sensory Evaluation of Yogurts

Augmented reality (AR) applications in the food industry are considered innovative to enrich the interactions among consumers, food products, and context. The study aimed to investigate the effects of AR environments on the sensory responses of consumers towards different yogurts. AR HoloLens headsets were used to set up two AR environments: (1) AR coconut view (ARC) and (2) AR dairy view (ARD). Hedonic ratings, just-about-right (JAR), check-all-that-apply (CATA) attribute terms, emotional responses, purchase intent, and consumer purchasing behaviors of three types of yogurts (dairy-free coconut, dairy, and mixed) were measured under ARC, ARD, and sensory booths (SB). The results showed that the liking scores of dairy and mixed yogurts were generally higher than the coconut yogurt regardless of the environment. The interaction effect of yogurts and environments was statistically significant in terms of appearance, taste/flavor, sweetness, mouthfeel, aftertaste, and overall liking. JAR and penalty analysis revealed that consumers penalized the coconut yogurt for being “too much” in sourness, “too little” in sweetness, and “too thin” in mouthfeel. For the CATA analysis, attribute terms positively associated with overall liking (such as “sweet”, “smooth”, and “creamy”) were selected for dairy and mixed yogurts, whereas the attribute terms negatively associated with overall liking (such as “firm”, “heavy”, and “astringent”) were only selected for coconut yogurts. Regarding yogurt-consumption behaviors, the purchase intent of dairy and mixed yogurts was higher than that of the coconut yogurt, and taste and health were considered to be the most critical factors for yogurt consumption.