Consumer-led food product development

Introduces the factors affecting consumer food choice, exploring issues such as sensory perception, culture and ethics, and analyses methods to understand food related attitudes.

Consumer acceptance is the key to successful food products. It is vital, therefore, that product development strategies are consumer-led for food products to be well received. Consumer-led food product development presents an up-to-date review of the latest scientific research and methods in this important area.

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. The final part of the book 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 will be 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
• Sensory perception as a basis of food acceptance
• How does culture affect choice of foods?
• Psychobiological mechanisms in food choice
• How do risk beliefs and ethics affect food choice?
• Consumer attitudes to food innovation and technology

Part 2 Determining consumers' food-related attitudes for food product development

• Methods to understand consumer attitudes
• Using means-end chains to understand food consumers' knowledge structures
• Consumer attitude measures
• Measuring consumer expectations
• Boredom and the reasons why some new food products fail
• SensoEmotional optimisation of food products and brands

Part 3 Methods for consumer-led food product development

• Sensory research and consumer-led food product development
• Opportunity identification in new product development
• Consumer-driven concept development and innovation
• Consumer testing of food products using children
• The use of just about right (JAR) scales
• Conducting difference testing and preference trials
• Thurstonian probabilistic approaches
• Using auctions to estimate prices and value of food products
• The use of partial least squares methods
• Case study of consumer-oriented food product development: reduced-calorie foods
• Preference mapping and food product development

ISBN: 978 1 84569 072 4