S. Meillon* 1,2; C. Urbano 2; G. Guillot 1; N. Jacquet 1; P. Schlich 2

1  Centre de Recherche Pernod Ricard, France
2 INRA, Centre Européen des Sciences du Goût, France

Before experiencing a product for the first time, consumers tend to rely on its extrinsic cues. Several studies examined the relative impact of sensory properties and extrinsic cues on consumer response and emphasized a significant interaction between these two factors on overall liking. Measures used to take place in 3 steps: product evaluation in blind, evaluation of information alone and evaluation of product with information. This approach can be discussed as it is time costing and it involves subtracting hedonic scores obtained in 3 very different and moreover unrealistic conditions.

This study, applied to partially dealcoholized wines, proposed another approach to measure the relative impact of sensory and information on overall liking by manipulating information in such a way that both parameters could be assessed in only one step, in the same conditions and in real life settings.
A Chardonnay and a Shiraz wine (13.5%) were partially dealcoholized up to 9.5%. Wines were presented in labeled bottles as indicates the experimental design in figure 1. 200 French consumers evaluated the corresponding wines at home by rating their appreciation before (expectation) and after tasting.

A strong segmentation of consumers into two groups was emphasized for both grape varieties. Just based on extrinsic characteristics of wine bottles, the first group had a significant negative expectation towards alcohol reduced wines whereas the second group had no negative or positive expectation. After having tasted wines, consumers with negative expectation depreciated independently from the information the taste of dealcoholized wines and it was worsened when the information about alcohol reduction was given. The second group did not depreciate the sensory properties of the alcohol-reduced wine however they better liked it when the information about alcohol reduction was labeled. This group, potentially interesting for the dealcoholized wine market, was significantly represented by a rather feminine population, having a weak knowledge and implication in wine.