Elsevier

Food Quality and Preference

Volume 84, September 2020, 103934
Food Quality and Preference

Short Communication
Implementing immersive technologies in consumer testing: Liking and Just-About-Right ratings in a laboratory, immersive simulated café and real café

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2020.103934Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Three contexts (laboratory, immersive simulated and real-life) were compared.

  • We found no differences in liking nor Just-About-Right scores between the contexts.

  • Participants felt most engaged in the real-life and immersive simulated context.

Abstract

Initial research indicates that the use of immersive technologies may improve the predictive validity and reliability of liking scores in consumer testing. However, how immersive technologies impact Just-About-Right ratings is hardly known. Forty-five participants took part in three tasting sessions, each in a different context: 1) laboratory, 2) immersive context simulating a café using audiovisual cues, and 3) real café. Each session, participants tasted four tomato soups varying in salt content preceded by a warm-up sample. Liking, optimal levels of sensory attributes (JAR) and engagement were measured. Results showed that there were no differences in liking or JAR ratings on sensory attributes of the soups across the three contexts. Nevertheless, participants felt more engaged in the real café and simulated café than in the laboratory. These results contribute to a better understanding of how sensory differences as assessed in a laboratory or immersive context relate to sensory differences that consumers would notice when they use the products in real-life.

Introduction

In traditional central location tests, participants evaluate products in isolated sensory booths where everything is as standardized as possible (i.e., temperature, light conditions, sound etc.) and non-product contextual information is intentionally minimized. This is completely different from real-life situations in which you drink or eat a product in different contexts (e.g., at home or work, in a café or restaurant) together with other people (e.g., with family, friends and colleagues). Although sensory booths enable a strict control over product testing, they may not be representative of what happens in the real world as they do not take into consideration the role of context in shaping product perceptions and acceptance (Galiňanes Plaza, Delarue, & Saulais, 2019).

A solution would be to simulate the real-life context in the laboratory via the use of immersive technologies. i.e., re-creating the physical context of a consumption situation in a laboratory with visual, auditory and olfactory cues. Initial research indicates that incorporating immersive technologies into sensory and consumer testing may improve the predictive validity and reliability of liking scores (Bangcuyo et al., 2015, Delarue et al., 2019, Hathaway and Simons, 2017, Sinesio et al., 2018). However, little is known how immersive technologies impact optimal levels of sensory attributes (JAR ratings) of products. The aim of the present study was therefore to measure JAR ratings next to liking in a laboratory context, an immersive simulated context and a real-life context.

Section snippets

Participants

In total, 54 Dutch participants were recruited to participate in three taste sessions from the Wageningen Food & Biobased Research database according to the following selection criteria: 1) 18–60 years of age, 2) consuming tomato soup at least once a month, and 3) healthy (self-reported). Of the 54 recruited participants, nine participants were excluded from the study as they did not show up (eight participants) or dropped out after the first taste session (one participant). This resulted in a

Results

Visual assessment of the Q-Q plots and residual plots indicated that normality and homogeneity of variance assumptions were met. As we observed no statistically significant differences for Gender, Day of week and Timeslot (p > 0.05), we report only the means of the experimental groups for all analyses.

Discussion

This study investigated taste perception and liking of tomato soups in a laboratory context, an immersive simulated café and a real café. To our surprise, we observed no significant differences in liking and JAR ratings for the soups between the three contexts. Nevertheless, participants felt most engaged in the real café and immersive simulated café, and least in the laboratory.

Overall, we can conclude that the more realistic scenarios (i.e., real café and immersive simulated café) increased

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the Dutch Top Consortium for Knowledge and Innovation (TKI) Agri&Food together with Unilever R&D Vlaardingen, Kikkoman Europe R&D Laboratory and Noldus Information Technology (TKI-AF-17005). We would like to thank Manouk van Zoggel for helping in the data collection, Saskia Meijboom for her help with the recruitment of subjects and João Paulo for her statistical advice.

Conflict of interest

E.H.Z. is an employee of Unilever Innovation Centre Wageningen, The Netherlands, which markets food, home and personal care products. D. Kaneko is an employee of Kikkoman Europe R&D Laboratory Wageningen, The Netherlands, which is a major supplier of naturally brewed soy sauce products.

Author statement

E.H.Z. was responsible for the design and manuscript. E.V. carried out the study and was involved in the data analyses and manuscript writing. R.A.W. contributed to the design, data analyses and manuscript writing. D.K and G.B.D. were involved in the design and earlier drafts of the manuscript.

References (20)

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