Enhancing consumer sensory science approach through augmented virtuality.

Augmented Virtuality (AV) is a concept that merges components of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), incorporating real elements into a virtual environment. This review analyses the influence of AV technology on sensory science and consumer behaviour, with the potential to improve product evaluation through sensory analysis. The objective is to develop immersive sensory environments that closely resemble real-world scenarios, offering accurate insights into consumer perceptions and preferences. Participants will be able to observe genuine food products within the virtual environment. Through the utilization of a multidisciplinary approach, the analysis explores the point at which technology and human senses intersect, revealing new and unique understandings of decision-making processes. This enhances comprehension of consumer choices and behaviour in virtual environments, providing practical uses for industries navigating the ever-changing nature of augmented virtuality. This review demonstrates that the integration of AV elements in sensory science can have a substantial influence.

Developing a novel screening tool to address pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy at point of care.

Many children are still not vaccinated against COVID-19, often attributed to rising pediatric vaccine hesitancy. To address this complex public health issue, interventions that uncover parental thinking at point of care are needed to help facilitate discussions in the exam room. The cognitive science framework of Rule Developing Experimentation helps distinguish how people think about day-to-day topics by presenting respondents with a systematic combination of messages that determines the ideas primarily driving their decisions. We hypothesized that Rule Developing Experimentation can empirically assess and identify parental mind-sets in deciding to vaccinate their children to prevent COVID-19. Artificial intelligence was also incorporated to more efficiently help formulate messages. Through an iterative process, surveying a total of 600 participants, three mind-sets emerged regarding the types of messages which parents believe would convince them to vaccinate their children to prevent COVID-19. These three mind-sets are summarized by the following phrases - "Covid is Serious," "Science Says Vaccine Works," and "Vaccine Returns Kids to Normalcy". Using these mind-sets, a simple six-question instrument (i.e., Personal Viewpoint Identifier) was then created to quickly discern at point of care a parent's mind-set surrounding pediatric COVID-19 vaccination. By quickly identifying a parent's mindset at point of care, providers can then utilize the results of the assessment to deliver individualized messaging to parents about the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination. A future study is planned to evaluate the impact of incorporating the Personal Viewpoint Identifier into routine pediatric care settings on COVID-19 vaccination rates.

Reinventing the role of consumer research in today's open innovation ecosystem.

Consumer research (CR) has played a key role in the food and beverage industry. Emerging from laboratory product-tests, it has evolved into a corporate testing service that measures the consumer reactions to products/concepts using a wide range of analyses/metrics. We propose that CR transform itself in light of accelerated knowledge expansion, mounting global, and local economic pressure on corporations and changing consumer needs. The transformation moves from its traditional testing into creating profoundly new knowledge of the product and understanding of the corporation's current and future customers. CR's tasks will involve: contributing/expanding science, applying open innovation principles, and driving consumer-centric innovation. We identify seven paradigm shifts that will change CR, namely: a different way of working--from testing to open sourcing; from good corporate citizen to change leader; open new product development (NPD) process; new management roles/cultures; universities and industry, new education curricula, and cooperation; from battle over control to sustainable sharing is winning model (SiW); and the central role of design. This integrative, innovative CR requires the implementation of three recommendations: start the change process now, fine-tune along the way; create a new marketing/CR department; and educate and professionalize. These recommendations provide the blueprint for jump-starting the process and call for immediate actions to deal with the severity of the crises facing the CR profession.

Aroma, Quality, and Consumer Mindsets for Shelf-Stable Rice Thermally Processed by Reciprocal Agitation.

Food engineering, food chemistry, and consumer segmentation were used to evaluate ready-to-eat rice. The aromatic Louisiana Clearfield Jazzman (CJ) and Thai Jasmine (TJ), and a non-aromatic parboiled (PB) rice were hydrated during the first 10 min of processing with reciprocal agitation followed by static retort processing. The aroma compound, 2-Acetyl-1-pyrroline (2-AP) was more heat-stable in CJ than TJ rice but decreased 15-fold compared to the rice cooker method. Pareto analysis indicated that rice type and agitation had the main effect on amylose and total starch and chroma and hue. Color differences of rice agitated during hydration and between rice cooker or static retort processed rice, indicated only slight differences for each rice variety. Hydration of dry rice during retort cooking and similar starch, color, and aroma quality were achieved with reciprocal compared to static or rice cooker methods. Survey responses categorized consumers into three, mindsets driven by rice consumption, convenience, or packaging.

The mind-set of teens towards food communications revealed by conjoint measurement and multi-food databases.

We introduce a new type of study that combines self-profile of behaviors and attitudes regarding food together with responses to structured, systematically varied concepts about the food. We deal here with the responses of teens, for 28 different foods and beverages. The study creates a database that reveals how a person responds to different types of messaging about the food. We show how to develop the database for many different foods, from which one can compare foods to each other, or compare the performance of messages within a specific food.

Drivers of Vaginal Drug Delivery System Acceptability from Internet-Based Conjoint Analysis.

Vaginal microbicides potentially empower women to protect themselves from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially when culture, religion, or social status may prevent them from negotiating condom use. The open literature contains minimal information on factors that drive user acceptability of women's health products or vaginal drug delivery systems. By understanding what women find to be most important with regard to sensory properties and product functionality, developers can iteratively formulate a more desirable product. Conjoint analysis is a technique widely used in market research to determine what combination of elements influence a consumer's willingness to try or use a product. We applied conjoint analysis here to better understand what sexually-active woman want in a microbicide, toward our goal of formulating a product that is highly acceptable to women. Both sensory and non-sensory attributes were tested, including shape, color, wait time, partner awareness, messiness/leakage, duration of protection, and functionality. Heterosexually active women between 18 and 35 years of age in the United States (n = 302) completed an anonymous online conjoint survey using IdeaMap software. Attributes (product elements) were systematically presented in various combinations; women rated these combinations of a 9-point willingness-to-try scale. By coupling systematic combinations and regression modeling, we can estimate the unique appeal of each element. In this population, a multifunctional product (i.e., broad spectrum STI protection, coupled with conception) is far more desirable than a microbicide targeted solely for HIV protection; we also found partner awareness and leakage are potentially strong barriers to use.

Strawberry flavor: diverse chemical compositions, a seasonal influence, and effects on sensory perception.

Fresh strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa) are valued for their characteristic red color, juicy texture, distinct aroma, and sweet fruity flavor. In this study, genetic and environmentally induced variation is exploited to capture biochemically diverse strawberry fruit for metabolite profiling and consumer rating. Analyses identify fruit attributes influencing hedonics and sensory perception of strawberry fruit using a psychophysics approach. Sweetness intensity, flavor intensity, and texture liking are dependent on sugar concentrations, specific volatile compounds, and fruit firmness, respectively. Overall liking is most greatly influenced by sweetness and strawberry flavor intensity, which are undermined by environmental pressures that reduce sucrose and total volatile content. The volatile profiles among commercial strawberry varieties are complex and distinct, but a list of perceptually impactful compounds from the larger mixture is better defined. Particular esters, terpenes, and furans have the most significant fits to strawberry flavor intensity. In total, thirty-one volatile compounds are found to be significantly correlated to strawberry flavor intensity, only one of them negatively. Further analysis identifies individual volatile compounds that have an enhancing effect on perceived sweetness intensity of fruit independent of sugar content. These findings allow for consumer influence in the breeding of more desirable fruits and vegetables. Also, this approach garners insights into fruit metabolomics, flavor chemistry, and a paradigm for enhancing liking of natural or processed products.

'Mind genomics': the experimental, inductive science of the ordinary, and its application to aspects of food and feeding.

The paper introduces the empirical science of 'mind genomics', whose objective is to understand the dimensions of ordinary, everyday experience, identify mind-set segments of people who value different aspects of that everyday experience, and then assign a new person to a mind-set by a statistically appropriate procedure. By studying different experiences using experimental design of ideas, 'mind genomics' constructs an empirical, inductive science of perception and experience, layer by layer. The ultimate objective of 'mind genomics' is a large-scale science of experience created using induction, with the science based upon emergent commonalities across many different types of daily experience. The particular topic investigated in the paper is the experience of healthful snacks, what makes a person 'want' them, and the dollar value of different sensory aspects of the healthful snack.

Measuring acceptance of milk and milk substitutes among younger and older children.

Appropriate nutrient-dense foods and beverages are crucial for children for proper growth and development and to develop healthful lifelong habits. This study investigated children's (ages 8 to 16 y old) perception of sensory intensity, attribute liking and overall liking of unflavored and chocolate lactose-free cow's milk and soy beverages. Products were not identified as to whether they were soy or milk. Children showed greater acceptance of lactose-free cow's milk compared to milk substitute beverages, within flavor category. No differences in acceptance emerged by ethnic group (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic), but a large difference emerged by age group. All product acceptance differences perceived by older children reoccurred among the younger children and in the same direction, but the older children used a larger range of numbers, especially at the lower end, rather than at the higher end of acceptance. The effect of age is not a simple scaling bias but may suggest a reduced criticism by younger respondents of less-acceptable products.

Psychophysics of sweet and fat perception in obesity: problems, solutions and new perspectives.

Psychophysical comparisons seem to show that obese individuals experience normal sweet and fat sensations, they like sweetness the same or less, but like fat more than the non-obese do. These psychophysical comparisons have been made using scales (visual analogue or category) that assume intensity labels (e.g. extremely) which denote the same absolute perceived intensity to all. In reality, the perceived intensities denoted by labels vary because they depend on experiences with the substances to be judged. This variation makes comparisons invalid. Valid comparisons can be made by asking the subjects to rate their sensory/hedonic experiences in contexts that are not related to the specific experiences of interest. Using this methodology, we present the evidence that the sensory and hedonic properties of sweet and fat vary with body mass index. The obese live in different orosensory and orohedonic worlds than do the non-obese; the obese experience reduced sweetness, which probably intensifies fat sensations, and the obese like both sweet and fat more than the non-obese do. Genetic variation as well as taste pathology contribute to these results. These psychophysical advances will impact experimental as well as clinical studies of obesity and other eating disorders.

TASTE INTENSITY AS A FUNCTION OF STIMULUS CONCENTRATION AND SOLVENT VISCOSITY.

The method of magnitude estimation was used to determine how viscosities imparted by sodium carboxymethylcellulose affect the taste intensities of various concentrations of glucose, citric acid, sodium chloride and quinine sulfate. For almost all levels of concentration across the four substances, an increase in the viscosity of the aqueous solvent produced decreases in taste intensity. A power function with a negative slope was chosen to describe the relation between the apparent viscosity (V, in centipoises) and the taste intensity (T): T=kV-n , where n varied between 0.05 and 0.20. The relation between the concentration of the sapid chemical and the taste intensity, in most instances, also conformed to a power function, although some deviations occurred at low stimulus levels.