Appetizing as a predictor for liking and preferences

The following chapter will evaluate results on consumer perception of appetizing to predict liking and preferences, which is important to understand in respect to development of functional meat products containing meat hydrolysates. As the descriptive and holistic evaluation do not reveal consumers accept and preferences of the product and hydrolysates, following section will evaluate appetizing used as predictor for liking of - and preferences for the four types of products. The aim is to reveal the consumer’s drivers of liking and additionally the relationships between consumer liking and the sensory evaluation is investigated to identify the consumer’s individual preferences.

5.4.1 Drivers of ‘liking’

Drivers of liking is investigated and related to the four types of products. As the Holistic by DMRI™

data is a result of the individual consumer own perception that motivate their assessment, it is of interest to see how the different variables are related and if there is differences between the two consumer groups. The two plots in Figure 19 shows PLSR loading plots for consumer perception of the holistic words familiar, traditional, boring, discount, chemical, strange, different, exclusive and natural variables (X) related to their perception of appetizing (Y).

Figure 19: PLSR loading plot for consumer perception of familiar, traditional, boring, discount, chemical, strange, different, exclusive and natural related to perception of appetizing. Two groups of 85 consumers were judging either liver pate and wiener sausages (A) or meatball and salami (B) on their perception of 10 abstract words in relation to taste.

The two first principal components describe 55 % of the variance in perception of appetizing in wiener sausages and liver pate (Figure 19, A) and 58 % of the variance in perception of appetizing in

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meatball and salami (Figure 19, B). The two plots are almost identical and confirm that the two groups of consumers are similar in their perception of appetizing related to the other variables. For both consumer groups natural are the big driver of appetizing with respect to the four different products.

Chemical is anti-correlated and can be interpreted as the opposite of natural in the consumer perception. The perception of exclusive is correlated to appetizing and negatively correlated with boring and discount. Familiar and traditional are correlated reversely correlated with different and strange.

PLSR loading plots (Figure 19) clearly show how consumers’ perceptions of the 10 holistic words are related in dimensions of novelty, quality and naturalness parameters, where naturalness are the big driver of liking in both consumer groups. It is in accordance with the fact that the more a product is perceived as natural and homemade the higher liked and more accepted among consumers (K. G.

Grunert, 2010). These results underlines the tendency derived from the interpretation of the common descriptive attributes related to the perception of holistic words of liver pate and wiener sausages that were classified by novelty and quality parameters (figure x). As consumers seldom consume a food product they do not like whereas the consumption increases of those foods products with high liking (Graaf et al., 2007; Yeomans & MacFie, 2007), the perception of naturalness seems to be dominant for food choices. Nevertheless there is situations in which people choose the less liked food on the background of their state of hunger or other different motives.

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5.4.2 Preference analysis

Consumer preferences are investigated and related to the four types of products. The consumers individual ratings for appetizing are used as predictors for preferences. The average of common sensory descriptors and the average consumer perception of holistic words (X) are related to all the individual consumer perceptions of appetizing by a PLSR preference mapping. The preference models were made on the two different consumer groups, which tasted either liver pate and wiener sausages (Figure 20) or salami and meatball (Figure 21), respectively.

Figure 20: (A) PLSR loading plot for consumer perception of appetizing as a prediction of liking. Average of common sensory attributes and perception of holistic for wiener sausages and liver pate in blue are related to consumers preference (appetizing) represented by red dots. (B) Score plot for two wiener sausages (W) and four liver pates (L).

The two first principal components describe 44 % and of the variance of the consumer’s preferences with respect to wiener sausages and liver pate (Figure 20, A). The score plot in Figure 20 (B) shows which products are responsible for the pattern seen in the X and Y - loading plot. Liver pate is located in the upper right side and the wiener sausages in the lower left side similar to Figure 17 in section 5.3.3 Overall interpretation of taste and perception. The horizontal dimension describes the hydrolysates in which the wiener sausages reference is anti-correlated with HPL and HPP11 in liver pate. The vertical dimension mainly describes the product preferences. The results of preference map show that the 85 consumers have clear differences in their ‘preference’ for the wiener sausages and liver pate products, as the consumers are spread in all four quadrants.

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Figure 21: (A) PLSR loading plot for consumer perception of appetizing as a prediction of liking in salami and meatballs. Average of common sensory attributes and holistic in blue are related to consumers liking (appetizing) represented by red dots. (B) Score plot showing three meatballs (F) and three salamies (S).

The two first principal components describe 54 % of the variance in the consumer’s preferences with respect to meatball and salami (Figure 21, A). The score plot in Figure 21, B show which products are responsible for the pattern seen in the X- and Y- loading plot. The horizontal dimension describes the hydrolysates having both the meatball and salami references negatively correlated with HPP11 in meatball. The vertical dimension mainly describes the product preferences. The results from preference map on salami and meatball shows that the 85 consumers mainly are clustered from the center to the upper right quadrant which is associated to HBG1.1 salami and the references in the score plot (Figure 21, A and B) and are negatively correlated to meatball with HPP11 and HPG1.1 in the lower left quadrant.

The plots in Figure 20 and Figure 21 illustrates how the average of common sensory attributes and perception of the holistic words can be related directly to the consumers in the loading plots (A) whereas the score plot is related to the product (B). The results show that the first consumer group has different perceptions of appetizing for wiener sausages and liver pate, in contrast to the second consumer group, which found salami more appetizing. As the preference is predicted from the consumer perception of appetizing (Danish “indbydende”) the results from preference mapping must be seen more as how appealing the products are perceived rather than an exact consumer preference.

The consumers did not have the opportunity to choose between the products, but as far as possible, they had the opportunity to choose between the two sets of products until only one set were left.

The off and bitter modalities, which is found prominent in meatball with HPP11 and associated with strange, different, chemical, boring and discount, is therefore perceived as unappetizing. The salami with HPG1.1 seems to be perceived as the most appetizing among the salamis and meatball products

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in Figure 21. On the other hand the consumers perception of liver pate and wiener sausages are not clustered thus none of the products seem to be perceived as more appetizing than others. Again it indicates that the 85 consumers perceived the wiener sausages and liver pate products differently.

Compared with the interpretations of the descriptive and holistic results in Figure 17 it seems that consumers have different preferences related to the sensory descriptors. Some find the brown appearance and bitter flavor of HPL in liver pate appetizing were as others find rose appearance and spicy odor in the reference of wiener sausages more appetizing. As liver pate and wiener sausages can be classified by novelty and quality parameters it seems that consumers perceive these parameters different in the two types of products. It can substantiate the interpretation that the off and bitter modalities related to the hydrolysates are not as prominent in the liver pate and wiener sausages as it is in the salami and meatballs. Moreover, the off and bitter modalities perceived as appetizing by some parts of the consumers can be related to different and strange in the novelty dimension.

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