Effects of an evoked refreshing consumption context on hedonic responses to apple juice measured using best–worst scaling and the 9-pt hedonic category scale

Awareness of the need to consider a product’s consumption context when measuring consumer hedonic response of a product is increasing among consumer sensory researchers. This study investigated the effects of evoking a consumption context using a written scenario on hedonic response measured using best–worst scaling and the 9-pt hedonic category scale. Hedonic responses for four apple juices with relatively large sensory differences were compared when measured in the evoked context ‘when having something refreshing to drink’ using best–worst hedonic scaling (n = 65) and the 9-pt hedonic scale (n = 48). Best–worst scaling discriminated between the four apple juices when a refreshing context was evoked (p < 0.01), while the juices were equally liked using the 9-point scale (p = 0.41) when the same context was evoked. Consumers perceived best–worst scaling to be more difficult than the 9-pt scale, however there was no difference between the two methods for consumers perceived accuracy of their liking information. The present study highlights that the effect of an evoked context on hedonic response may not be universal for hedonic methods. Further research is needed to understand the effect of evoking context on the liking of products, and to determine whether this measure reflects product liking in an actual consumption context.     

Discriminability and appropriateness of category scaling versus ranking methods to study sensory preferences in elderly

Two methods: the nine-point hedonic scale and hedonic ranking, have been compared for their discrimination power and appropriateness when studying hedonic responses in elderly. A group of 35 elderly subjects (aged 60–88) and a control group of 35 young adults (aged 20–25) participated in the comparison. Five samples of each of two commercial fruit juices (apple and orange) differing in sensory profiles served as test material. Generally hedonic discriminability in elderly was lower than in young subjects for both methods. Ranking appeared to be more discriminating for apple juice samples, where hedonic differences among samples were smaller (F sample_apple=8.80); for orange juice samples, of more pronounced hedonic differences (F sample_orange=17.24) both methods revealed equal discriminability. From simplicity of the task and “user friendliness” of the tasting procedure, hedonic ranking seems to have some advantages over nine-point hedonic scaling. Results obtained by both methods for both juices were significantly correlated for elderly as well as for young subjects. However, the strength of correlation (Spearman R value) in elderly was much lower (R_apple=0.2217; R_orange=0.2213) than in young (R_apple=0.4766; R_orange=0.4844). Repeatability of hedonic assessment of orange juice samples performed by elderly (n=27) 2 weeks after first evaluation for both methods was very good and did not show any advantage of one method over another.     

Comparison of best–worst and hedonic scaling for the measurement of consumer wine preferences

Background and Aims:  Best–worst scaling (BWS) is compared to standard hedonic scaling for measuring consumer wine preferences. BWS is a relatively new method for producing ratio-level scales and has gained recent attention for application in sensory research, but has not been applied to wine.
Methods and Results:  Regular wine consumers (112) evaluated eight designed wines with both scaling methods in an intra-subject design over two test periods. The methods did not result in comparable product liking results. The eight wines could almost be differentiated on an aggregated level with hedonic ratings ( P  = 0.076); there was no significant difference with BWS. Latent class analysis was used to identify two clusters, which differed on the preferences for the designed sensory components. The BWS design had to be split into several blocks, so no complete individual measures were available, which prevented analysing heterogeneity for this method.
Conclusions:  BWS needs more wines to be assessed per person in order to discriminate between red wines and to allow modelling of consumer preference heterogeneity. Respondents would have to accomplish complete individual BWS designs, which requires repeated exposure to the same set of wines over several tasting sessions.
Significance of the Study:  This study demonstrates that BWS is not as suitable for sensory consumer preference measurement of red wine as hedonic rating. While BWS has shown a higher discriminative ability for different products and in non-sensory research, the factors of alcohol, tannin and memory fatigue make it less practical for red wine sensory measurement compared to hedonic rating.     

Effects of grind size and brew time upon sensory traits,consumer likability and antioxidant activity of Arabica cold brew

This study examined effects of grind size (n = 3; 0.65, 1.15, 1.65 mm) and brew time (n = 3; 18, 24, 30 h) on the sensory traits, consumer likability and antioxidant activity of cold brew coffee (brewed at 4 °C). Total dissolved solids were measured to evaluate extraction efficiencies. The finest grind size demonstrated significantly greater antioxidant activity than the other samples, but grind size was not a significant factor for eighteen of the nineteen assessed sensory traits nor for hedonic assessments of appearance, flavour or overall likability. Notably, 24 h brew time samples showed consistently lower magnitudes of sensory traits, hedonic assessments and antioxidant activity than those brewed at 18 or 30 h. This effect was significant in predictive modelling and not explainable by magnitudes of dissolved solids (which increased with brew time). Findings demonstrate substantial nonlinear relationships between processing time and cold brew attributes.     

Hedonic scaling: A review of methods and theory

In recent years, interest in measuring hedonic responses has grown tremendously in both basic psychophysics and applied food and consumer research, resulting in the development of several new hedonic scaling methods. With these developments have come questions about theoretical and practical differences among the methods. The goal of this review is to compare and contrast these different approaches for the purpose of aiding researchers in selecting the most appropriate scaling method for their specific measurement needs. The review begins by addressing fundamental issues in scaling methodology, including the role of context effects, then moves on to describing and discussing the development of various types of hedonic scales, their specific properties, and their potential advantages and disadvantages.     

A new approach to measuring Overall Liking with the Many-Facet Rasch Model

The 9-point hedonic scale is the most common hedonic rating scale used to provide an assessment of overall liking. Studies have shown that consumer judgements of overall liking could be influenced by their ratings of the liking of flavour, texture, aroma or appearance. However, this is not directly taken into account when using the holistic variable of overall liking. A new approach is proposed for measuring overall liking that is firstly based on initially considering what sensory characteristics (attributes or modalities) defines the latent sensory construct of OVERALL LIKING. The aim of this study was to develop a single measure of Overall Liking that incorporates the relative importance of liking ratings from different sensory characteristics by applying a Many-Facet Rasch model to produce interval-scaled estimates of Overall Liking. A homogeneity test found significant differences (p < 0.01) between the Rasch means estimates of the cured 10 hams that were evaluated by a consumer panel (n = 90), with the two different definitions of the Rasch measure of Overall Liking. No significant differences were found when comparing Rasch measures with raw scores using an intrablock BIB ANOVA and Durbin test. The degree of Relevance, shown on a Many-Facet Wright map, indicated the extent which a variable contributed to the measure of Overall Liking. Of the 10 sensory attributes used for the Individual Attribute Measure, Hardness and Juiciness contributed the most, while Sweetness and Typical Flavour contributed the least. However, the modalities used in rating the Likings of Overall Flavour, Texture, Aroma and Appearance contributed almost to the same extent to Overall Liking in the Total Attribute Measure. The Wright Map also showed that the categories on the 9-point hedonic scale were unequally spaced and the distance between them became increasingly larger the further away from the central category of ‘Neither like nor dislike’.     

Effect of quinoa,chia and millet addition on consumer acceptability of gluten-free bread

There is an increasing demand for gluten-free foods; however, standard gluten-free foods are deficient in nutrients. This study investigated the use of alternative grains (chia, millet and quinoa) in gluten-free breads to evaluate their sensory properties (fresh and following a partial bake method). A sensory trial (n = 98) asked participants to consider six fresh bread samples made from chia, millet and quinoa, using 9-point hedonic scales and check-all-that-apply. A second sensory trial (n = 89) was then completed using par-baked bread samples of the different formulations. The sensory properties and the acceptability of the bread were significantly affected by the chia and quinoa flour. The millet flour did not change the acceptability of the bread. Furthermore, the partial baking method (after 90 days of frozen storage) did not significantly affect the acceptability of the breads made with chia, millet and quinoa, but it did affect the acceptability of the control bread prepared with brown rice flour. Overall, millet flour could be incorporated into gluten-free breads made following a partial baking method without affecting consumer acceptability. Future studies should use a trained panel to evaluate how the breads differ based on the partial baking method.     

The relationship between children’s and mothers’ vegetable liking in Chile,China and the United States

This study analyzed children’s (n = 384), 5 to 12 years old, and their mothers’ (n = 321) vegetable liking in three countries (Chile, China and the USA). Liking measures were collected using tasting sessions in which fourteen different vegetables were tasted. Three factors were tested: country (Chile, China, USA), status (mother/child) and products (vegetables). The results showed that mothers gave higher liking vegetable scores than their children when all the participants were analyzed together (p < 0.05). However, some differences were found between countries when they were analyzed individually. Specifically, American mothers like vegetables more than their children, while Chinese and Chilean mothers like vegetable the same amount as their children. Moreover, it was observed that Chilean mothers liked a smaller variety of vegetables than their children. The use of the 7-point hedonic scale to rate the vegetables was also analyzed. Children in the three countries and Chilean mothers showed a polarized use of the scale (with mostly extreme like and extreme dislike ratings), while mothers in China and the USA showed a pattern of use of the upper part of the scale. Three preference segments were uncovered for children in Chile and China, and two for US children. The variety of the children’s diets, the amount of vegetables eaten at lunch/dinner, and the level of the mothers’ satisfaction with their children’s vegetable intake were factors used to characterize the different child preference segments according to their level of liking (p < 0.05).     

A comparison of the labeled magnitude (LAM) scale,an 11-point category scale and the traditional 9-point hedonic scale

Schutz and Cardello [Schutz, H. G. & Cardello, A. V. (2001). A labeled affective magnitude (LAM) scale for assessing food liking/disliking. Journal of Sensory Studies, 16, 117–159] proposed the labeled magnitude (LAM) scale for measuring food acceptance. The LAM is a line scale anchored at its end points with the phrases “greatest imaginable like” and “greatest imaginable dislike” and uses as intermediate anchors the nine phrases of the traditional hedonic scale. In this study, three hedonic scales were compared, including the widely-used 9-point hedonic scale, the LAM scale, and an 11-point category scale using the LAM’s verbal anchors as category labels. Three groups of consumers (N = about 100 each) used one of the three scales to evaluate the acceptability of highly liked foods (orange juices, potato chips, cookies, and ice cream, with four samples of each). Scales were evaluated primarily on their ability to show differences in acceptability, the correspondence of acceptance ratings to preference ranking and the correspondence of stated product usage (e.g., purchase of pulp vs. non-pulp orange juice) to the product scoring highest. All three scales performed equally well, with no one scale showing a consistent superiority over another. All three scales were able to differentiate acceptability of the orange juices, chips and cookies. No scale differentiated among the ice creams, which had equal and high acceptability. All scales showed a strong correspondence between liking and preference rankings and also between the product rated highest and the type of product usually consumed, within each of the product categories.     

Just-about-right and ideal scaling provide similar insights into the influence of sensory attributes on liking

Just-about-right (JAR) scaling is criticized for measuring attribute intensity and acceptability simultaneously. Using JAR scaling, an attribute is evaluated for its appropriateness relative to one’s hypothetical ideal level that is pre-defined at the middle of a continuum. Alternatively, ideal scaling measures these two constructs separately. Ideal scaling allows participants to rate their ideal freely on the scale (i.e., without assuming the “Too Little” and “Too Much” regions are equal in size). We hypothesized that constraining participants’ ideal to the center point, as is done in the JAR scale, may cause a scaling bias and, thereby, influence the magnitude of “Too Little” and “Too Much”. Furthermore, we hypothesized that the magnitude of “Too Little” and “Too Much” would influence liking to different extents.Coffee-flavored dairy beverages (n = 20) were formulated using a fractional, constrained-mixture design that varied the ratio of water, milk, coffee extract, and sucrose. Participants tasted 4 of 20 prototypes that were served in a monadic sequential order using a balanced incomplete block design. Data reported here are for participants randomly assigned to one of two research conditions: ideal scaling (n = 129) or JAR scaling (n = 132). For both conditions, participants rated overall liking using a 9-point hedonic scale. Four attributes (sweetness, milk flavor, coffee flavor and thickness) were evaluated. The reliability of an individual participant’s ideal rating for an attribute was evaluated using the standard deviation of their ideal ratings (n = 4). All data from a participant were eliminated from further analyses when his/her standard deviation of the ideal ratings for any of the four rated attributes was identified as a statistical outlier. This resulted in the elimination of 15 of 129 (12%) of participants in the ideal scaling group. Multiple linear regression was employed to model liking as a function of “Too Little” or “Too Much” attribute intensities.Mean ideal ratings (averaged across participants) for all four attributes were significantly different from the central point of the scale (i.e., 50). However, coffee flavor was the only attribute for which the mean ideal rating (57.2) fell outside the central 10% (45.0–55.0). Even so, the magnitude of “Too Little” and “Too Much” was not affected by the scaling method. The influence of the magnitude of “Too Little” and “Too Much” on liking was asymmetrical. Both scaling methods agreed that sweetness and coffee flavor were the main sensory attributes affecting liking. Overall, JAR scaling and ideal scaling were comparable for measuring “Too Little” and “Too Much”, and identifying the main factors affecting liking.     

Parents’ and Children's Acceptance of Skim Chocolate Milks Sweetened by Monk Fruit and Stevia Leaf Extracts

Chocolate milk increases milk consumption of children, but high sugar content raises health concerns. Interest in sugar reduction and parents’ preference for natural sweeteners necessitates further research on natural nonnutritive sweeteners. However, it is important to maintain consumer acceptability, especially for children, while reducing sugar in chocolate milk. The objectives of this study were to identify the sweetness intensity perception of stevia leaf (STV) and monk fruit (MK) extracts in skim chocolate milk (SCM), to evaluate STV and MK as the sole or partial sweetener source for SCM for young adults (19 to 35 y) and children (5 to 13 y), and to determine if information on natural nonnutritive sweeteners impacted parents’ acceptability of SCM. Power function and 2‐alternative forced choice studies were used to determine the iso‐sweetness of nonnutritive sweeteners to a sucrose control in SCM (51.4 g/L, SUC control). Young adults (n = 131) evaluated 9 different SCM (SUC control, STV, MK, STV:sucrose blends, or MK:sucrose blends) in a completely randomized 2‐d test. Children (n = 167) evaluated SUC control SCM and SCM with 39.7 g/L sucrose and 46 mg/L MK (MK25) or 30 mg/L STV (STV25). Parents evaluated SUC control, MK25, and STV25 in a balanced crossover design with a 40‐d wait time between primed or unprimed ballots. Chocolate milks solely sweetened by nonnutritive sweeteners were less acceptable compared with SUC control by young adults. MK25 and STV25 were acceptable by young adults and children. The presentation of chocolate milk label information had different effects on parental acceptance. Traditional parents preferred sucrose sweetened SCM, and label conscious parents preferred SCM with natural nonnutritive sweeteners.     

RATA questions are not likely to bias hedonic scores

Concurrent elicitation of hedonic and sensory information from consumers helps to identify the sensory attributes that drive consumer preferences. However, there is a risk that asking consumers about specific sensory characteristics can bias their hedonic responses. This research extends previous work by investigating if concurrent use of rate-all-that-apply (RATA) questions, a variant of CATA questions is associated with bias of the hedonic scores. RATA questions extend CATA questions by requiring consumers to also rate the intensity of the terms that are applicable for describing samples (‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’). In eight consumer studies (n = 560) across five product categories there was no evidence of concurrent use of RATA questions influencing hedonic scores. When RATA questions were used concurrently with a hedonic question there was a strong tendency for greater hedonic discrimination between samples (5 of 8 studies). This suggested that the discriminative capacity of the hedonic question was increased by inclusion of the RATA question, a result that could be attributable to the RATA question increasing consumers’ engagement and attention to the task. Further research is required to confirm this result and tentative explanation.     

Consumer sensory evaluation of aftertaste intensity and liking of spicy paneer cheese

Capsaicin creates a spicy, burning, sensation that lingers. Thus, an increased understanding of spicy aftertaste and its relationship to consumer liking is of interest. We aimed to evaluate aftertaste intensity and liking of spicy paneer cheese (0, 3.75, 7.5 and 30 ppm capsaicin) by consumers (n = 79) every minute for 15 min. Influences of consumer consumption patterns on spicy aftertaste were also explored. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed among samples, across aftertaste time periods (beginning, middle and end), and within consumer consumption categories. In general, the more capsaicin in a sample, the longer the sensation lasted, with a more intense spicy and overall aftertaste. Results showed consumers in different categorisation groups rated intensity of the samples differently, and reported liking the 30 ppm capsaicin paneer sample differently. Additionally, a consumer’s spice level preference was shown to not affect the time to abatement of the spicy aftertaste intensity perceived by consumers.     

Consumer perceptions of pork eating quality as affected by pork quality attributes and end-point cooked temperature

The study evaluated the interactive and individual effects of fresh pork loin (n = 679) ultimate pH (pH), intramuscular fat (IMF), Minolta L^* color (L^*), Warner–Bratzler shear force (WBS), and four cooked temperatures (62.8 °C, 68.3 °C, 73.9 °C, and 79.4 °C) on consumer (n = 2280) perception of eating quality (n = 13,265 observations). Data were analyzed using ordered logistical regression. Predicted mean responses were consistently near or under five on the 1–8-point end-anchored scale, indicating a neutral perception of pork eating quality regardless of fresh quality or cooked temperature. Responses improved as IMF and pH increased and WBS decreased, whereas L^* did not contribute significantly to variation in responses. Increasing IMF resulted in a very small incremental improvement in responses, but was of practical size only when comparing the least (1%) to the greatest (6%) levels. Loin pH and WBS were primary contributors to consumer perceptions, whereby an incremental increase in pH (0.20 unit) and decrease in WBS (4.9 N) resulted in a 4–5% reduction in the proportion of consumers rating pork as 6 (favorable) on the 8-point scale. No interactions between quality and temperature effects were observed. Increased cooked temperature was negatively (P < 0.05) associated with Overall-Like and Tenderness ratings, but the incremental effect was small. Juiciness-Like and Level responses decreased by 0.50 units as temperature increased across the range. Consumer responses favor pork with lower WBS, greater pH and IMF, and pork cooked to a lower temperature.     

The role of production method information on sensory perception of smoked salmon—A mixed-method study from Denmark

Product information is capable of steering the consumers’ expectation formation process. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate whether information on production method influence consumers’ preference and liking of smoked salmon. A consumer test was conducted among 92 consumers to determine liking of the smoked salmon on a 7-point hedonic scale before (blind) and after (informed) receiving information about production method (organic, conventional and wild-caught). Further, two explanatory focus group discussions (n = 5 in each group) were conducted to determine consumers’ belief on production method.A linear mixed-effects model analysis indicated that the consumer overall liking of wild-caught smoked salmon significantly increased after production method information was provided, while regarding organic and conventional smoked salmon no significant difference was noted. Post hoc test indicated that organic smoked salmon was significantly more liked than wild-caught smoked salmon (mean difference ± standard error: 0.652 ± 0.19, p < 0.01) in blind condition, however, between organic and conventional smoked salmon no significant difference was noted (-0.032 ± 0.19, p = 0.983). Further, in informed condition, organic smoked salmon was significantly more liked than conventional smoked salmon (0.50 ± 0.19, p < 0.05), however, between organic and wild-caught smoked salmon no significant difference was noted (0.228 ± 0.19, p = 0.452). Relative importance analysis results suggest that liking of taste was the most important contributor (26.84%) to smoked salmon overall liking (p < 0.05, R² = 74.17%). Focus group discussion revealed that consumer beliefs related to food safety, animal welfare and sustainability as well as purchasing habits seem to influence smoked salmon preferences.Thus, organic aquaculture sector should focus on promoting consumer beliefs by providing reliable information based on scientific evidences that helps differentiates their products with that of conventional and wild-caught smoked salmon. Future studies might investigate other fish species to better understand the role of product method information on consumer preference and liking of fish.