Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Assessing product attributes and consumer liking of new prototypes is crucial to product development. Despite positive consumer data, nearly 80% of new launches in the grocery sector fail, costing manufacturers billions of dollars. In the food and beverage industry, panelists are often asked to perform sensory evaluation and consumer liking tests in sterile sensory booths, devoid of contextual cues. However, context is an important part of the consumer experience, and it significantly influences perception, liking, and consumer behavior. This proposal seeks to reintroduce contextual information into sensory and consumer testing methodologies with the goal of improving the reliability and discriminability of sensory and consumer testing methodologies. The outcomes of this research are far-reaching and will impact nearly all new innovations aimed to improve food quality. By utilizing immersive technologies, we aim to restore the complex environmental cues that are crucial for shaping the perceptual and hedonic responses to food. To this end, we will determine the extent to which product liking and choice are influenced by context. As eating is often a social endeavor, we will also quantify the influence of virtual social interactions on consumption behavior and product liking in immersive settings. Finally, we will delineate the effect of personalized context on product perception and liking. Improving the predictive power of sensory and consumer data will enable better-informed product development decisions, leading to more successful launches, significant cost savings, and reduced waste by better meeting consumer needs.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
Thegoal of this proposal is to develop more reliable and discriminating sensory and consumer testing methodologies that enable food manufactures to deliver against consumer wants more effectively. To do this, we willutilize immersive technologies (e.g. virtual reality) to restore the complex, multifaceted contextual information that is important in shaping hedonic responses to food and to assess the efficacy of such testing conditions to improve the ecological validity and predictability of consumer sensory and hedonic information.To meet this goal, we have the following four objectives:Objective 1: Assess whether product liking is context dependent by measuring the impact of different contextual scenarios on liking and purchase intent of the same products.Objective 2: Determine if the effect of context manifests beyond liking responses by influencing consumers' food perceptions and/or altering the structure of underlying consumer segments.Objective 3: Quantify the influence of virtual social interactions on food choice, consumption behavior, and product liking in immersive settings.Objective 4: Delineate the effect of personalized context on product perception and liking.
Project Methods
We have built a Food Testing Immersive Technologies laboratory that enables us to introduce pertinent contextual information by displaying relevant videos onto a video wall and independently manipulating the visual, auditory, and olfactory components of an environment. We have subsequently developed a virtual reality (VR) headset-based system that utilizes high-definition 360° video to maximize presence, hand-tracking features that enable simultaneous interaction with virtual and real-world elements (e.g. food products), and an embedded data acquisition system (virtual tablet) to prevent users from having to remove the headset in order to record sensory and hedonic responses. The use of these innovative systems will enable the execution of research against the specific aims of this proposal.Perception, liking, and food choice behavior will be collected from recruited subjects using validated scales in the presence and abence of relevant contextual information presentedusing immersive technologies. In addition, subject engagement and presence data will be collected. Data will be analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA. We expect individual's preferences, liking, and purchase intentions will change depending upon the environment within which the evaluation takes place and the sensory attributes driving liking to be different depending upon the scenario within which a product is being evaluated, but within an environment, these metrics will be substantially more stable (reliable) when assessed across replicates.We also expect the sensory attributes driving liking to be different depending upon the scenario within which a product is being evaluated and that panelist membership within consumer segments to be modified in response to evaluations occuring in different contextual environments. In response to the inclusion of virtual social interactions, we expect that subjects will model the food choices of the virtual confederate to which they were exposed. As such, we expect subjects to choose more healthy snacks after being exposed to a virtual confederate making healthy food choices, and to choose unhealthy snacks (fewer healthy choices) after being exposed to a virtual confederate making unhealthy food choices. Finally, in response to personalizing the context in which a subjectevaluates product,we expect the personalized virtual context to be most discriminable and reliable with regards to the hedonic and perceptual (attribute intensity and JAR ratings) data due to the high ecological validity and high experimental control.Results from these experiments will be conveyed to the target audience through scientific presentations, publications, and teaching materials. Moreover, to specifically target industry stakeholders, we will engage in outreach efforts to facilliate knowledge transfer and best practices associated with immersive testing.