New project to help better understand food consumers

In the fast-paced world of new food product development, predicting what will be a winner with ever-demanding consumers remains a persistent challenge. A new research project led by Dr Jennifer Wagner from the School of Food and Advanced Technology, aims to unravel the enigma of our emotional responses to food and how they influence our choices.

The project, titled New combined approaches to predict product choice, seeks to transform our understanding of food choice behaviour. Traditional methods such as the use of hedonic scales that ask a consumer ‘how much do you like this?’ have often been mistaken in accurately forecasting what consumers ultimately prefer to purchase. Liking a food item doesn't always equate to choosing it in real-life scenarios. Dr Wagner and her team will explore a new advanced approach, with the aim of integrating conscious and unconscious emotional responses to food consumption for more precise predictions.

Food Experience and Sensory Testing laboratory (Feast) Director and principal investigator for the project, Professor Joanne Hort, believes this could could be a game-changer for understanding the consumer-product relationship.

"It integrates the fields of psychology and consumer sensory science to understand how we can better predict consumer product choices. If we can make this more predictable and reliable, it becomes a quicker and more cost-effective way of evaluating new food products before they are launched in the supermarket," she says.

Fonterra Research and Development Centre's Dairy Food Design and Consumer Experience Programme Manager Dr Christina Coker says, "We are eager to see what the project unravels in terms of the complex interplay between our emotions and dairy. It marks a significant departure from traditional research assessments and promises exciting insights into our food preferences and choices."

The research promises to push the boundaries of our understanding of food choices. By combining cutting-edge methodologies and interdisciplinary collaboration, it holds the potential to transform the way we perceive, choose and enjoy the foods that nourish us. Feast hopes to make some fascinating discoveries in this exploration of the human food psyche.