Emotional and sensory profiling by children and teenagers: A case study of the check‐all‐that‐apply method on biscuits

Abstract

Sensory and emotional profiling by consumers is gathering interest among scientists and companies as it could help to better understand the motives for food choice. Although children and teenagers are important food consumer groups, they are underrepresented in sensory research and little is known on how children and teenagers perform on these tasks. Therefore, this study investigates the emotional and sensory profiling of a traditional biscuit product among 122 children and teenagers (10–14 years old). The check‐all‐that‐apply (CATA) approach has been applied for conducting the emotional and sensory profiling task using an age‐appropriate protocol. Children and teenagers evaluated four different samples (market leader, store brand, small producer, and local bakery) and assessed their overall liking under three conditions: blind, expected (brand logo) and informed. Overall liking differed significantly among the samples and brand information influenced the informed liking scores. Samples were associated with different emotional profiles and sensory attributes by the children and teenagers. Practical applications This study illustrates the potential of using CATA questions for obtaining emotional connotations and sensory attributes of food products with children and teenagers. Together with the insights regarding their attitudes toward traditional food products and store brands, this could help producers when developing promotion initiatives to bring their traditional food products to a potential market of young consumers. Including both sensory and emotional measurements yield interesting insights for the product development if companies want to produce products in alignment with the brand message. Further, this study shows that branding influences not only the overall liking but also the sensory perception of the food products. Therefore, this study adds to the discussion on the need and importance of a more realistic product presentation during sensory testing.

Predicting children's food choice using check‐all‐that‐apply questions

“…This indicates that the CATA method is able to provide more information on which sensory attributes were perceived by a child population to be different from equally‐liked samples, providing more information regarding their drivers of liking (Laureati et al, ). These findings are in line with those reported by Schouteten, De Steur, et al () who examined the possibility of using the CATA response format to obtain discriminatory sensory profiles for speculoos biscuits with a child and teenage population. Furthermore, studies working with children and teenagers showed that the CATA response format is able to obtain distinguished sensory profiles for powdered fruit‐flavored juices (Cardinal et al, ), milk desserts (Vidal et al, ), fiber‐enriched apple purees (Laureati et al, ), and grape nectar (Lima, Ares, & Deliza, ).…”

“…Participants conducted the sensory profiling task by checking all of the sensory terms that they found applicable for the evaluated sample. Fourteen terms, covering different sensory modalities (appearance, aroma, flavor, and texture) were included for the sensory profiling task: “brown color,” “hard,” “herbal aroma,” “buttery aroma,” “granular,” “cinnamon aroma,” “rough surface,” “cinnamon flavor,” “aftertaste,” “strong flavor,” “herbal flavor,” “dry,” “crunchy,” and “soft.” These terms were selected using the results of a pilot study (20 children, aged 11–13 years old) following a two‐step procedure (Schouteten, De Steur, et al, ). In the first step, children individually evaluated the applicability of 30 sensory terms (based on prior research; Schouteten, De Steur, et al, ), to describe the sensory properties of speculoos samples.…”

“…Moreover, a major advantage of this method when working with children is the lack of scaling, as this is a significant barrier for performing descriptive analysis with children (Nicklaus, ). Results from studies with milk desserts (Vidal, Barreiro, Gómez, Ares, & Giménez, ), powdered fruit‐flavored juices (Cardinal, Zamora, Chambers, Carbonell Barrachina, & Hough, ), biscuits (Schouteten, De Steur, Lagast, De Pelsmaeker, & Gellynck, ), and apple purees (Laureati et al, ) have indicated that the CATA approach can lead to discriminating sensory profiles when working with children and teenagers.…”

Influence of information received by the consumer on the sensory perception of processed orange juice

“…Previous results that compare the sensory perception of different products in blind and informed tests showed that consumers are normally more aware of products when they obtain information about them (Grasso, Monahan, Hutchings, & Brunton, ; Reis, Alcaire, Deliza, & Ares, ; Schouteten, De Steur, Lagast, De Pelsmaeker, & Gellynck, ), especially when these products provide nutritional/health benefits (Grasso et al, ; Reis et al, ). However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have been published so far evaluating if receiving correct information about a product can override the prejudgments consumers have about processed foods.…”

Label Claims Influences on Acceptance: Consumers’ Changes Expectation and Intention in a Case Study with Functional Chocolate Ice Cream

“…In the blind condition, differences in liking scores were motivated by to the type of product: samples with a high percentage of cocoa were less preferred by consumers. Schouteten et al (2017) investigated the brand information impact on children´s overall liking of biscuits. They realized that brand influenced the informed liking scores.…”