Watch our video to find out why consumers need to take multiple bites or sips when we ask them if they like your product.

Transcript:

It takes several bites to measure consumer acceptance of plant-based foods

How can we determine what consumers really want? Well, when we ask them, we should capture their product experiences as accurately as we can.

How? Traditionally we ask consumers to taste a single bite or sip of a product and indicate how much they like it. But, measuring liking alone is not enough to understand the full consumer product experience in detail. Researchers have reached beyond liking by measuring emotional responses to products, together with liking. Just think about how eating a piece of chocolate makes you feel.

Even better… Have you noticed how your sensory experiences of food often change from the first bite or sip, as you chew and even after swallowing? To capture these changes across the whole eating experience, researchers have created new tools called ‘temporal methods’.

Next question, if you are eating a burger, or drinking a coffee, do you stop eating or drinking after one bite or sip? The answer is no (unless it tastes really bad!). You are likely to take a number of bites/sips until you are satisfied, or until the burger or coffee is finished. We think it is important for researchers to capture the eating experience over multiple bites or sips, and use temporal methods to capture liking and emotional responses during the complete product experience.

We have adapted a temporal tool called temporal check-all-that-apply (TCATA) that captures product experience over time, to measure emotional and liking responses to food across multiple bites/sips.

Why is this approach useful for future foods? It allows us to link consumer sensory experience, with liking and emotional responses across multiple bites. This means we can better identify what drives them to accept or reject a food. This can tell us, for example if consumers enjoy the final bite of a product just as much as their first bite. This information will help us to identify what makes people reject or accept plant-based products.

Our next steps: Within the Consumer Dimension of Future Foods project we are continuously developing and/ or adapting methods to accurately understand consumer wants and needs. Watch this space for more updates on our advances in sensory and consumer testing methods.

Dr. Maheeka Weerawarna, 5 Oct 2021