Development of a Sensory Method to Detect Food-Elicited Emotions Using Emotion-Color Association and Eye-Tracking

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

This study aimed to evaluate the influence of origin information on Pinot Noir wine labels using eye-tracking and its associations with purchase intent, and hedonic and subconscious emotional responses. Two studies were carried out on untrained university staff and students aged 20-60 years old. Study 1 was conducted to assess consumers' (n = 55; 55% males, and 45% females) self-reported and subconscious responses towards four design labels (with and without New Zealand origin name/script or origin logo) using eye-tracking and video analysis to evaluate emotions of participants. In study 2, participants (n = 72, 56% males, and 44% females) blind-tasted the same wine sample from different labels while recording their self-reported responses. In study 1, no significant differences were found in fixations between origin name/script and origin logo. However, participants paid more attention to the image and the brand name on the wine labels. In study 2, no significant effects on emotional responses were found with or without the origin name/script or logo. Nonetheless, a multiple factor analysis showed either negative or no associations between the baseline (wine with no label) and the samples showing the different labels, even though the taste of the wine samples was the same, which confirmed an influence of the label on the wine appreciation. Among results from studies 1 and 2, origin information affected the purchase intent and hedonic responses marginally. These findings can be used to design wine labels for e-commerce.

Comparison of Self-Report Questionnaire and Eye Tracking Method in the Visual Preference Study of a Youth–Beverage Model

This study compares the characteristics of a self-report questionnaire (SRQ) and eye tracking (ET) based on a simple human–beverage visual cognition model. The young participants were mainly defined by their gender and body mass index (BMI). The beverage samples consisted of milk, coffee, cup, and coaster. SRQs allow the participants to clearly express their overall cognition of the samples in the form of vocabulary, while ET captures their hidden thinking process. The analysis, using a random forest (RF) classifier, found that participant parameters (gender and BMI) played a more important role for SRQ, while ET was related to beverage parameters (color and shape). This work reiterates that these two methods have their advantages and complement each other in food sensory analysis.

Consumers' Emotion Attitudes towards Organic and Conventional Food: A Comparison Study of Emotional Profiling and Self-Reported Method

Emotions represent a major driver behind a consumption behavior. It may provide more important information beyond consumers’ preferences. This study contributes to a better understanding of the discrepancy in emotion attitudes towards organic versus conventional food using a cognitive survey and real food consumption experience. An emotional profiling under informed and uninformed condition, a cognitive survey, and a rapid forced-choice test were carried out with 46 consumers. Our work detected a yawning gap in consumers’ declared emotion attitudes in the cognitive survey and elicited emotion attitudes in the food consumption experience. Results showed that consumers exaggerate their positive emotion attitudes towards organic over conventional and their negative emotion attitudes towards conventional over organic. Even though consumers expressed higher negative emotion attitudes towards conventional food than organic in a cognitive survey, during the emotional profiling they had nearly equal emotion attitudes towards both conventional and organic samples. Moreover, positive declared emotions in a cognitive survey formed a good predictor of the final choice of conventional products over organic under time pressure. However, preferences, declared emotion, as well as elicited emotion attitudes were less useful as predictors of organic choice under time pressure. These results show the importance of taking into consideration the type of applied method when investigating consumers’ emotion attitudes towards organic and conventional products.