Influence of Label Design and Country of Origin Information in Wines on Consumers' Visual, Sensory, and Emotional Responses

Novel Contactless Sensors for Food, Beverage and Packaging Evaluation

The use of traditional methods to evaluate food, beverages, and packaging tends to be time-consuming, labour-intensive, and usually involves high costs due to the need for expensive equipment, regular refill of consumables, skilled personnel and, in the case of sensory evaluation, incentives or payments involved for participants recruitment and/or panelists training and participation [...].

The Application of Biometric Approaches in Agri-Food Marketing: A Systematic Literature Review

A challenge in social marketing studies is the cognitive biases in consumers' conscious and self-reported responses. To help address this concern, biometric techniques have been developed to obtain data from consumers' implicit and non-verbal responses. A systematic literature review was conducted to explore biometric applications' role in agri-food marketing to provide an integrated overview of this topic. A total of 55 original research articles and four review articles were identified, classified, and reviewed. It was found that there is a steady growth in the number of studies applying biometric approaches, with eye-tracking being the dominant method used to investigate consumers' perceptions in the last decade. Most of the studies reviewed were conducted in Europe or the USA. Other biometric techniques used included facial expressions, heart rate, body temperature, and skin conductance. A wide range of scenarios concerning consumers' purchase and consumption behaviour for agri-food products have been investigated using biometric-based techniques, indicating their broad applicability. Our findings suggest that biometric techniques are expanding for researchers in agri-food marketing, benefiting both academia and industry.

Remote sensory assessment of beer quality based on visual perception of foamability and biometrics compared to standard emotional responses from affective images

The social isolation settings derived from the COVID-19 pandemic affected the standard sensory evaluation techniques used in the food and beverage industry. This situation forced companies and researchers to assess other options to continue conducting these tests in remote contactless locations. This study aimed to evaluate two sets of samples (i) six images from Geneva affective picture database (GAPED) and (ii) six videos of beer pouring using traditional self-reported sensory data and emotional response from consumers biometrics. Specifically, four research questions (RQ) arouse from this study: RQ1: are there significant differences between GAPED images and beers in unconscious and self-reported responses from consumers?, RQ2: are there any correlations between subconscious and self-reported responses from consumers when assessing beer?, RQ3: can consumers differentiate positive, neutral and negative images based on subconscious and self-reported responses?, RQ4: are there any relationships between subconscious and self-reported responses when assessing GAPED images and beers, and how are samples associated with variables? A total of 113 Mexican beer consumers participated in the virtual sensory session using an online videoconference software to record videos of participants during the session. Results showed there were significant differences (p < 0.05) between samples, especially for self-reported responses (RQ1), and several correlations between variables, such as positive correlations between the perceived quality of beers and happy emoji (r = 0.84), and negative correlation with confused emoji (r = -0.97; RQ2). Besides, using the proposed methods, consumers were able to correctly differentiate through elicited emotions the positive, neutral and negative GAPED images (RQ3). Regarding RQ4, several relationships were found between variables in both GAPED images and beers; however, it was found that different emotions were elicited depending of the stimuli used. The proposed method showed to be a reliable and practical option to conduct visual and potentially tasting sensory tests in isolation and recruit participants from different countries without travelling to collect their responses.