Predicting consumers’ repeated food choices

N, Urala* & L. Lähteenmäki

VTT Biotechnology, Finland

 nina.uralavtt.fi

Consumers meet a large number of product alternatives when making their food shopping. While the hedonic preferences strongly drive the choices, tasting is usually not possible before purchasing new products. The aims of this study were to examine how the expectations and the hedonic preferences are linked with the product choices and how we can predict choices of new products that are not tasted.

Consumers made choices from a counter containing six product alternatives with different sensory properties and health related information. The choices were studied with snack bars (study I, n=40) and beverages (study II, n=60). The choices were monitored for four and three weeks, respectively. In the first study, the participants’ were allowed to familiarise themselves with the product alternatives in a tasting test before the choice period. In the second study, the participants had to start the beverage choices with familiarising with the appearance of packages and product information without tasting the products. Liking was measured in a blind test situation with other samples several days before the experiment.

When the participants were familiar with the products (study I), the choice frequencies followed the hedonic preferences. Tasting did not, however, affect the expected healthiness of the snack bars. The hedonic preferences measured after first tasting predicted the choices, and choices were made among the three most preferred alternatives, whereas least liked options were not chosen. In beverages when no tasting was allowed the choice frequencies followed the expected pleasantness evaluated from the bottled and labelled samples. When ratings of blind tasting of samples were compared with expected information-based ratings, the liking ratings correlated moderately, but the bottled beverages were expected to be healthier and the respondents were more willing to use them than the same samples in the blind test. Expectations, preferences and product information seem to be very crucial factors in predicting consumers’ repeated functional food choices.

Key words: choice, consumer, snack bar, beverage, functional food, preference