Focus on consumer tastes, urges study
assessments suggests that food makers should pay closer attention
to consumer tastes.
The Norwegian Food Research Institute experiment, which pitted consumer opinions against quality scores given by expert dairy assessors, revealed notable differences between how consumers responded to certain cheeses and how experts predicted they would respond.
This suggests that more weight should be given to the opinions of the consumer when determining food quality standards.
Taste remains the most important concern for consumers when it comes to making purchasing choices. Recent research from UK ingredients firm Tate & Lyle showed that while concern about the health consequences of diet was significant, the majority of people still believed that taste was the most important factor in determining what they ate.
And if consumers aren't in agreement with food makers over what constitutes good taste, then they will invariably vote with their wallets.
A total of 12 Norwegian cheeses were evaluated by five expert individuals, who professionally predict the likelihood of consumer rejection of a product. Five selected cheeses were then evaluated by 110 consumers.
Participants in the study rated their overall liking of the cheeses, flavour intensity and degree of soft or firm texture.
One notable finding was that one of the cheeses, which was scored lowest overall by the experts, was scored higher among one consumer segment. This could be because some consumers actually favoured certain characteristics of flavour or texture considered to be defects in the cheeses by the assessors.
"It is important to study consumer responses to food products and to check the results against defined quality standards and tolerance limits,"said lead researcher Margrethe Hersleth of the Norwegian Food Research Institute.
"Hopefully, food companies will pay more attention to consumer responses during establishment and evaluation of quality standards. It is important to do more research on methods for obtaining sensory specifications with consumer input."
The study was recently published in the Journal of Food Quality, a scientific, peer-reviewed journal devoted to issues of food quality.
