Consumers’ visual attention to fruit defects and disorders: A case study with apple images

Postharvest losses of fruit and vegetables during retail and in consumers’ homes: Quantifications, causes, and means of prevention

“…Consumers are willing to accept low levels of defects and deterioration in F&V, but once a threshold is passed they will discard a portion until the severity of the defect reaches the point that the entire product is thrown away (Campbell et al, 2009;Jaeger et al, submitted). There has been some research on the effect of defects, disorders and damage on consumer decisions to eat/not eat produce (Ares et al, 2008a), and more research on how these factors affect decisions to purchase/repurchase (Ares et al, 2008a;Gamble et al, 2010, Jaeger et al, 2016. Consumers' willingness to repurchase is influenced by both the severity and incidence of the defect (e.g.…”

“…Research on lettuce found that consumers were more willing to accept visible deteriorations on whole leaves than leaves that had been minimally processed (Ares et al, 2008b). Eye-tracking studies have demonstrated that consumers quickly notice visual defects in apples and that once a defect is detected; consumers indicate they would not repurchase items (Jaeger et al, 2016). Decisions to consume at home are more lenient than decisions to purchase at a supermarket in regards to the presence of suboptimal foods and notably an 'apple with a spot' (small necrotic area along with a separate slightly damaged area that is symptomatic of a bruising) was treated more harshly than other foods (de Hooge et al, 2017).…”

Categorical Nature of Consumer Price Estimations of Postharvest Bruised Apples

“…After agreeing to the terms of the study with informed consent, participants proceeded to the participant characteristics questionnaire (age, gender, employment status, and purchase frequency of apples). en, they were asked to estimate the market price (estimated price) for 1 or 3 yellow-green "Orin" apples in the free-answer format based on photographic images presenting apples with 9 different levels of damage: 0 (normal apple), 6,7,8,9,10,11,12, and 13 (the area of the apple's surface that is damaged; each number represents ×10 −4 m 2 of damage) ( Figure 1). Damage severity levels 1 to 5 ×10 −4 m 2 were not used for the current study due to technical difficulties with consistently setting up damages for those levels.…”

“…In the retail market, the cosmetic appearance of an apple, such as color, shape, and damage, is directly related to a consumer's evaluation of the product's quality [8,9] which is to say that the subjective evaluation of the quality of an apple is strongly related to its appearance [10][11][12]. Because postharvest bruising is related to large product and nancial losses, abundant studies on bruise prevention, such as improved transportation techniques, from the viewpoint of suppliers have been conducted [6].…”

“…For instance, various researchers have examined physical factors related to damage such as packaging friction [6,13], vibration [14,15], and shock [16][17][18]. However, little research has focused on consumers' subjective evaluations of the quality of damaged products [11] and reported an association between visual attention to damaged apples and purchase intention. Another study by Kim and House [19] reported that large surface damage to grapefruits substantially lowers consumers' willingness to pay.…”