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Jhaelynn Elam Final Thesis Document.pdf (9.69 MB)

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Comparison of liking scores and panelist engagement when evaluating beverages in traditional booths and virtual or actual dining facility scenarios.

Elam, Jhaelynn
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1512038890525137

Abstract Details

2017, Master of Science, Ohio State University, Food Science and Technology.
Traditionally, sensory evaluations consist of an interaction between consumer and a stimulus. This interaction takes place in a small, white booth with a daylight or red light source. While in this booth, facing panelists is a sliding door that leads to a preparation room. Once a panelist is ready to begin, the testing supervisor then slides the samples being evaluated though the sliding door mentioned above. The disconnection with this practice is that it is not relevant to consumers’ actual experience with the consumption of the products being evaluated. A more realistic experience would imply an additional factor that is also a part of the interaction, context. With a lack of contextual information within the use of these traditional methods, it is likely that consumers are unable to evaluate the products in a manner that is the similar to their actual consumption experience. One of the potential solutions to this problem is the use of immersive technologies. Through previous studies investigating the use of immersive technologies, we have learned that liking scores attributed to food and beverages can be influenced by other products within a stimulus set, environmental context and ecological validity. With the use of immersive technologies, we have shown that restoring relevant contextual information during sensory product evaluation, improves reliability of consumer acceptance data, improves panelist product discriminability and enhances panelist testing engagement. Other research studies have also investigated various product-scenario combinations including cookie-virtual home kitchen and a cola-virtual quick serve studies. Although each of these research endeavors have supported the hypothesis of increasing contextual relevance within sensory evaluation, an actual comparison of traditional booths, virtual scenarios and actual environments have not been observed. If we are to fully examine the use of immersive technologies these comparisons must be analyzed. The objective of present study was to evaluate and compare liking scores obtained from traditional booths, virtual booths and actual dining facility scenarios. This objective will allow for the determination of immersive technologies as an alternative method for sensory evaluation tests. Furthermore, if immersive technologies are to be adopted as a new method, this study will help to reveal what conditions it would best be utilized. We hypothesized that the hedonic scores and engagement scores of the products obtained from the panelists in the virtual setting will better reflect the liking of the same products evaluated in the actual dining facility environment compared to the data obtained in the traditional sensory booths. The increased ecological validity of the immersive lab would better reflect the consumers experience within an actual dining facility scenario. Liking for cola and bottled tea products was evaluated by consumers at The Ohio State University (OSU) in traditional sensory booths and again in a virtual dining facility using the 9-point hedonic scale. Consumers recruited by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) evaluated the same samples in traditional sensory booths as well as an actual dining facility setting. For each setting, overall liking was followed by aroma, flavor, appearance and mouthfeel attribute liking questions. At the end of the product evaluations, consumers responded to engagement questions. Hedonic liking data was analyzed using a 3-way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) (panelist, beverage, testing environment as main effect) and a repeated measures ANOVA with, beverage (within subject) and testing environment (between subjects) as main effects). Engagement data was analyzed using a 2-way ANOVA (panelist, testing environment as main effects) and a repeated measures ANOVA with panelist (within subject) and testing environment (between subjects). For both cola and tea products, there were no significant differences in liking for data obtained in the traditional booths from OSU and UIUC. These results confirmed that panelists at each location are similar in product liking and provides a standard of knowing that the control testing methods were consistent. The comparisons of the scores obtained from the immersive and actual environments, showed only minor significant differences of the environment*beverage interaction. For cola, appearance and mouthfeel liking were found to be significantly different. This suggests that panelists evaluated the appearance and mouthfeel of the product differently across both environments. Furthermore, the results also indicated there were significant differences in overall and appearance liking when comparing the immersive and traditional data for the tea product evaluations and only appearance liking for the cola product evaluations. When comparing the traditional sensory booths with the actual dining scenario, there were significant differences in aroma found across both product sets and a difference in appearance found only within the tea product set. Overall, in contrast to our expectations, there were only a few differences found. However, there were many factors that likely influenced these results such as, lack of consistent context during preparation in the actual dining facility environment and the use of different panelists across two locations. Nevertheless, this insight has provided us with the knowledge for the necessary next steps to better our methods for testing in virtual and actual environments. The Engagement data results showed no significant differences in total engagement when comparing the immersive and dining facility environments and for traditional sensory booth (UIUC) and the dining facility setting (soda only). All of the other comparisons shows a significant difference including; traditional (OSU) vs. traditional (UIUC), traditional (OSU) vs. immersive and traditional (UIUC) vs. dining facility (tea only). The engagement level was highest in the immersive followed by the dining facility, traditional (UIUC) and lastly, traditional (OSU). These results suggest that level of engagement was highest in the immersive and actual environments and also that panelist engagement may be best in these environments as well. Overall, conclusions can be drawn that further investigations of comparing immersive, actual and traditional testing environments should be completed before a recommendation of immersive technologies as an alternative to traditional sensory booths. Such investigations have the potential to truly impact the quality of hedonic data and as a result provide food companies significant savings on product development costs due to failed product launches.
Christopher Simons (Advisor)
Monica Giusti (Committee Member)
Devin Peterson (Committee Member)
110 p.
Food Science
sensory evaluations; food science

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Elam, J. (2017). Comparison of liking scores and panelist engagement when evaluating beverages in traditional booths and virtual or actual dining facility scenarios. [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1512038890525137

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Elam, Jhaelynn. Comparison of liking scores and panelist engagement when evaluating beverages in traditional booths and virtual or actual dining facility scenarios. . 2017. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1512038890525137.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Elam, Jhaelynn. "Comparison of liking scores and panelist engagement when evaluating beverages in traditional booths and virtual or actual dining facility scenarios. ." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1512038890525137

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1512038890525137
208
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.