Consumers’ Impression of Minimally Processed Gala Apples Using Word Association

Abstract

This study aimed to identify consumers’ preferences and impressions of minimally processed “Gala” cultivar apples, using preference tests and word associations. The study was conducted online via the Google Docs tool and sent out via social networks. The participants were 607 individuals, mostly women, mainly between the ages of 18 and 45, with education up to undergraduate and postgraduate level. As regards the preference for minimally processed apples, the profile of the consumer did not influence the choice. The profiles analyzed were gender and education. For the word association test, 11‐word categories were formed, and among these, the most important aspect was appearance, followed by taste and texture, which was confirmed by correspondence analysis. Sample A (0 days—no storage) was the most preferred one, differing significantly from the other samples, whereas sample B (3 days of storage) and sample C (6 days of storage) were associated with characteristics for choice of product. The word association methodology revealed the consumer's impressions of the product, in addition to demonstrating simplicity, low cost, speed, and an exploratory character. Practical Application Gender and level of schooling did not influence the choice of minimally processed apples. Appearance was the most cited word in the word association test. Word association is a simple, fast, inexpensive, and projective technique.

European Consumers’ Perceptions and Attitudes towards Non-Thermally Processed Fruit and Vegetable Products

“…Furthermore, consumers are grocery shopping with an ever-expanding perspective on overall health and well-being [19,25]. In addition to health, consumers' desires for taste, food safety, affordability, convenience, and clear labeling and transparency were identified [6,14,17], which explained the major expected benefits and concerns stated in our focus groups. The increasing environmental awareness and sustainable thinking among consumers help them associate NTP with environmental cost [10,27], which was found to be one of the important factors that influenced consumers' perceptions towards non-thermally processed F&V.…”

More than words! A narrative review of the use of the projective technique of word association in the studies of food consumer behavior: Methodological and theoretical implications

“…to study the perception of consumers towards fruits and vegetables (Krumreich et al, 2019); cereals (Son et al, 2014;Dahiya et al, 2014;Bernardo et al, 2019;Rojas-Rivas et al, 2019), meat products (Viana et al, 2014;Graça et al, 2015;de Andrade et al, 2016;Ruby et al, 2016;da Rosa et al, 2019) and dairy products (Ares and Deliza, 2010a;Ares et al, 2010b;Oliveira et al, 2016;Soares et al, 2017;Pinto et al, 2018;Judacewski et al 2019;da Silva et al, 2021).…”

“…This pattern is replicated in most extensive studies (> 483 participants) as it is desired to reach a more significant number of consumers through cross-cultural studies or in countries where their territory is comparable to that of a continent and, therefore, there is a more significant number of participants in order to represent the population. For example, in Brazil, four studies were registered through online surveys with samples ranging from 607 to 1232 participants (Alcantara et al, 2020;da Rosa et al, 2019;Krumreich et al, 2019;Miklavec et al, 2016).…”

“…56.75% (n = 42) of the studies identified, in addition to performing descriptive analysis of the categories/dimensions, used the Chi-Square test to compare the frequency of mention of the words or categories generated from the WA technique, either to ascertain the association/independence in the frequency of mention between rows and columns (McHugh, 2013) of the categories represented in the contingency table or to identify the source of variation in the same table with the Global Chi-Square and Chi-Square per Cell tests (Symoneaux et al, 2012). The review shows that its use has been extended for the analysis of the information generated from the WA technique (Ares et al, 2015;de Andrade et al, 2015;Judacewski et al, 2019;Krumreich et al, 2019;Bernal-Gil et al, 2020;Rocha et al, 2020), specifically for the study of the sensory characteristics of products (Ares and Deliza, 2010b;Krumreich et al, 2019), or according to the frequency of consumption that people present towards different foods (de Andrade et al, 2016;Judacewski et al, 2019), including the identification of types of consumer groups according to their perception and eating behaviors (Viana et al, 2014;Rojas-Rivas et al, 2019;Bernal-Gil et al, 2020). Moreover, in cross-cultural studies, these statistical tests are par excellence the tools to make comparisons in the frequency of mention of the categories/dimensions (Ares et al, 2015;Sulmont-Roseé et al, 2019) and identify the most relevant elements in each population or culture.…”