Consumer Led Food Product Development presents up-to-date coverage of the latest research and methods.

Features:

• introduces the factors affecting consumer food choice
• explores issues such as sensory perception, culture and ethics
• analyzes methods to understand food related attitudes
• addresses a wide variety of methods used for consumer-led product development

Part 1 gives the reader a general introduction to factors affecting consumer food choice. Chapters explore issues such as sensory perception, culture, ethics, attitudes towards innovation and psychobiological mechanisms.

Part 2 analyses methods to understand consumers’ food-related attitudes and how these methods can be effectively used, covering techniques such as means-end chains and the food-related lifestyle approach.

Part 3 addresses a wide variety of methods used for consumer-led product development. Opportunity identification, concept development, difference testing and preference trials are discussed, as well as the use of techniques such as just-about-right scales and partial least squares methods.

Written by an array of international experts, Consumer Led Food Product Development is an essential reference for product developers in the food industry.

Contents

Part 1: Understanding Consumer Food Choice and Acceptance

Integrating consumer responses to food products

• Focus on the product
• Focus on the person
• Focus on social, economical and physical context

Sensory perception as a basis of food acceptance and consumption

• The sensory system
• Prediction of consumption from sensory-affective responses
• Individual factors modulating responses and consumption
• When sensory perceptions are ignored

How does culture affect choice of foods?

• Food and culture in historical perspective
• The ways culture affects food and food in life
• The big sense of culture and its relation to food and eating
• Culture and acquisition of food preferences
• Some examples of specific issues in product marketing and development in a cultural context
• Looking at a cultural comparison: the food world of French and Americans
• Understanding cultural dimensions in food choice for food product development

Psychobiological mechanisms in food choice

• The importance of understanding psychobiological mechanisms in food choice
• Need-states and hedonic rewards in eating
• Psychobiological influence on acquisition and expression of food preferences
• Motivational influences on food preferences
• Motivational influences on food choice
• Motivational influences on food intake
• Understanding psychobiological mechanisms in food choice for food product development

How do risk beliefs and ethics affect food choice?

• Consumer risk perception and food choice
• Ethical concerns associated to foods and agriculture technologies

Consumer attitudes to food innovation and technology

• Methods and models for analysing consumer attitudes to food innovation and technology
• Outline of consumer attitudes to food innovation and technology
• Understanding consumer choice
• Understanding consumer attitudes to innovation and technology for food product development

Part 2: Determining consumers' food-Related Attitudes for Food Product Development

Methods to understand consumer attitudes and motivations in food product development

• Qualitative methods
• Quantitative methods
• Qualitative vs quantitative: are they really in competition?

Using means-end chains to understand food consumers’ knowledge structures

• Conceptual model of MEC analysis theory
• The ‘laddering’ interviewing technique
• MEC consumer research and new product development

Consumer attitude measures and food product development

• The means-end chain approach
• The food-related lifestyle approach
• General discussion – the issue of consumer-led food product development

Measuring consumer expectations to improve food product development

• Expectations in psychology and consumer behaviour
• Basic elements of conducting research on consumer expectations

Boredom and the reasons why some new food products fail

• Product boredom
• Slowly rising aversion

SensoEmotional optimisation of food products and brands

• Using sensory characteristics to build brands
• SensoEmotional optimisation in brand and product development
• SensoEmotional profiling
• Commercial applications

Part 3: Methods for Consumer Led Food Product Development

Sensory research and consumer-led food product development

• The product development process
• Sensory’s role in product development
• Sensory evaluation
• Applications – opportunities

Opportunity identification in new product development and innovation in food product development

• A typology of consumer research for opportunity identification
• Opportunity identification: some concerns and limitations of supporting methodologies
• Goldenberg’s innovation template approach

Consumer-driven concept development and innovation in food product development

• Importance of concepts as blueprints for product design
• The need for faster and better concept design and innovation
• Systematic exploration of concepts by experimental design
• Consumer research venues and the internet
• Creating a product-concept ‘innovation machine’ through mixing/matching
• Sourcebooks for concept ideas: InnovAidOnlineTM.Net and It! ® databases
• Going beyond product features in determiners of consumer choice – the It! ® databases

Consumer testing of food products using children

• Sensory perception: sensitivity and perceived intensity
• The origin of food preferences
• Difference between children and adults in food preferences
• Research methods for testing children
• Hedonic scaling with children
• Hedonic scale structure
• Hedonic testing with pre-school age children
• Use of intensity and just-about-right scales

The use of just about right (JAR) scales in food product development and reformulation

• Introduction to JAR scales
• Defining JAR scales
• JAR scale construction
• Controversies
• Appropriate uses of JAR scales
• Analysis and interpretation of JAR scales
• Introduction to penalty analysis
• Alternatives to JAR scales

Conducting difference testing and preference trials properly for food product development

• The role of difference and preference testing
• Difference tests
• Preference tests
• How do we interact with the consumers?

Thurstonian probabilistic approaches to new food product development

• Probabilistic models

Using auctions to estimate prices and value of food products

• Estimate value of food product with auctions
• Using information from auctions to understand food choices
• Auctions and other methods: advantages, disadvantages and complementarities
• Limits of experimental auctions and future trends

The use of partial least squares methods in new food product development

• PLS method
• Layman’s guide to PLS methods
• Examples of PLS methods in practice

Case study of consumer-oriented food product development: reduced-calorie foods

• Consumer trends and healthy eating
• Reduced-calorie foods and beverages: marketing and technological challenges
• New product development success factors
• New product development case study: reduced –calorie on-the-go beverages

Preference mapping and food product development

• Conducting central location trials
• Analyses
• Recent developments in preference mapping

Index

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