Have you ever been asked to take part in a survey about a new food product? You were probably asked to rate how much you liked the product along a word-based scale? With today’s widespread use of emoji we wondered if selecting emoji might work just as well.
Liking for food is traditionally measured using a 9-point liking scale
The nine-point liking scale is a widely used tool in consumer research. For use with children or clinical populations the words are replaced with drawings of faces. An illustrated version of the scale works in all languages and for people who are unable to read.
Emojis are used widely in everyday communication
Recently, researchers have studied the use of emoji as an alternative to word-based responses in consumer research.
Emoji are widely used by people in everyday communication, especially in social media. This familiarity with emoji for expressing feelings may mean they can provide more or equally accurate measures as word-based responses to product experiences. To date, the use of emoji to measure consumer responses to foods is limited.
Our study
We conducted a study to determine whether we can use emoji to measure how consumers react to foods. The study included:
- 1400+ consumers from New Zealand and Singapore
- Aged 25 – 55 years
- Who were daily users of a smart phone and emoji in texts/email messages
- Were asked to select emoji that best represented each level of liking on the traditional nine-point liking scale
- When thinking about food experience.
Our findings
Our recent study identified a set of emoji that could be used in New Zealand and Singapore to represent nine levels of liking:
- The same nine emoji could be used in New Zealand and Singapore to represent the words used on the traditional scale.
Next steps
- Trial the emoji scale with consumers.
Watch this space to find out more details about this research.
Maheeka Weerawarna, 14 Feb 2022
For rating food emoji is the best option
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