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Introduces a method of food sensory evaluation employing artificial neural networks. The process of food sensory evaluation can be viewed as a multi‐input and multi‐output (MIMO) system in which food composition serves as the input and human food evaluation as the output. It has proved to be very difficult to establish a mathematical model of this system; however, a series of samples have been obtained through experiments, each of which comprises input and output data. On the basis of these sample data, applies the back‐propagation algorithm (BP algorithm) to “train” a three‐layer feed‐forward network. The result is a neural network that can successfully imitate the food sensory evaluation of the evaluation panel. This method can also be applied in other fields such as food composition optimizing, new product development and market evaluation and investigation.

Calls for theoretically informed interventions and a more reflexive stance are apparent in social marketing. Moving from a “prove” to “improve” mentality requires evaluations that learn from experience gained to identify improvements to inform future programme success. This paper considers the value of inclusion of stakeholders in process evaluation.

Two participant groups (n = 90, n = 182) and one key stakeholder group (n = 22) were surveyed in person, over the phone and online. Open-ended qualitative responses were analysed for recurring themes.

Key stakeholders contribute unique and valuable insight into programme implementation and engagement, expanding evaluation beyond participant feedback. Most notably, the process evaluation illuminated the engagement insight of programme volunteers, mid-level expansion opportunities offered by participating chefs and the perceived value of involvement across all stakeholder groups.

The study is limited by a lack of systematic stakeholder identification and to a single context, namely food waste.

This paper affirms the importance of process evaluation and application of stakeholder theory to social marketing. These contributions suggest a widened focus for the widely accepted NSMC benchmark criteria which centre attention on the end users targeted for change. Stakeholders should be included in process evaluations given they contribute important and unique partnership insights.

This paper extends stakeholder theory use in social marketing providing showcasing potential for this approach to deliver a more reflexive stance.

Building upon humans’ trichromatic vision systems, dual-process theory and halo effects, this paper aims to examine the effects of red and green color brightness of food pictures on customers’ evaluations and purchase intention of restaurant food.

The proposed hypotheses were tested across three experimental designed studies on a total of 575 participants. Multilevel analysis, analysis of variance and multivariate analysis of variance were applied for data analysis.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the effects of red brightness and green brightness on customers’ affective and cognitive evaluation of food and purchase intention in Study 1. Study 2 validates the effects of red and green brightness on food evaluation with the presence of nutrition information. Study 3 further elaborates on the halo effects of color brightness on customers’ favorable intentions to patronize a restaurant and willingness to pay for a meal in a controlled lab experiment.

One main limitation is that this paper focuses on unveiling the role of color brightness and does not consider other picture properties, which opens an avenue for future research.

This paper includes implications for food promotion and management of customers’ experience via food pictures.

This paper is one of the first attempts to reveal the effects of red and green brightness of food pictures on customers’ food evaluation and food consumption behavioral intentions.

To maintain the bottom line of food import risk in China, this paper proposes a novel risk state evaluation model based on bottom-line thinking after analyzing the decision-making ideas embedded in the bottom-line thinking method.

First, the order relation analysis method (G1 method) and Laplacian score (LS) are applied to calculate the constant weights of indexes. Then, the worst-case scenario of food import risk can be estimated to strive for the best result, so the penalty state variable weight function is introduced to obtain variable weights of indexes. Finally, the study measures the risk state of China's food import from the overall situation using the set pair analysis (SPA) method and identifies the key factors affecting food import risk.

The risk states of food supply in eight countries are in the state of average potential and partial back potential as a whole. The results indicate that China's food import risks are at medium and upper-medium risk levels in most years, fluctuating slightly from 2010 to 2020. In addition, some factors are diagnosed as the primary control objects for holding the bottom line of food import risk in China, including food output level, food export capacity, bilateral relationship and political risk.

This paper proposes a novel risk state evaluation model following bottom-line thinking for food import risk in China. Besides, SPA is first applied to the risk evaluation of food import, expanding the application field of the SPA method.

The purpose of this study is: to examine how the nutrient ad disclosures (i.e. absolute and evaluative disclosure) of fast food menu items influence consumers' evaluation behaviors of those foods; to investigate how consumers' subjective nutrition knowledge and BMI influence their evaluation behaviors of fast food meals with nutrient ad disclosures.

Two 2×2 experiment designs were used to investigate the influences of nutrient ad disclosures, subjective nutrition knowledge, and BMI on consumers' evaluation behavior.

The findings indicate that: the evaluative disclosure led to significantly less favorable consumer evaluations of selected fast food menu items than did the absolute disclosure; consumers who had high subjective nutrition knowledge and who were low BMI (i.e. people who have normal BMI) conducted significantly more critical evaluations of focal fast food meals with nutrient ad disclosures than did their counterparts.

Those findings imply that policy makers should develop a new format of nutrition information on fast food meals based on the evaluative disclosure in order to help consumers choose healthful foods.

Even though the effectiveness of the new menu-labeling regulation of the fast food industry is still controversial, only a few studies have been conducted to find a more effective nutrition information format than the current format. Thus, this study provides valuable implications to policy makers in terms of developing a more effective nutrition information format.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of arousal fit between music (auditory cues) and plate color (visual cues) on food evaluations.

A 2 (background music: high vs low arousal) ×2 (plate color: high vs low arousal) between-subjects experimental design was employed to test the hypotheses. Participants were recruited for a taste test in a food sensory lab located in a university in the northeastern USA. The dependent variable, food evaluation, was analyzed using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

The findings of this study indicate that when the two stimuli had congruent arousal qualities, participants rated the liking and perceived quality of a food item higher than those in the incongruent arousal conditions. More specifically, when the background music was high in arousal quality, participants gave higher evaluations for a food item served on a red (vs blue) plate. Conversely, when a low arousal music piece was played, a blue (vs red) plate resulted in higher food evaluations.

This study contributes to the growing literature on cross-modal correspondence on consumers’ product evaluations. Extending previous research on the congruity effect to the food sensory literature, this study demonstrates the joint effects of background music and plate color on taste perceptions. The results suggest that restaurant operators should be strategic in their choice of physical stimuli.

The present study measured participants taste perceptions while they were exposed to visual and auditory cues. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically demonstrates the impact of multiple environmental factors on taste evaluation.

This paper aims to offer social marketers an innovative method to promote healthy foods. This method demonstrates the effectiveness of indirect communication in attracting consumers to healthy foods. Further, it aims to offer a way to promote food as healthier with no detrimental effects on its perceived appeal, which are a likely side effect of advertising food as healthy.

Four between-participant lab studies (N = 50, 80, 80, 102) included manipulations of food motion vs stillness and then compared ratings of food freshness, healthiness and appeal using self-report measures.

Motion increases healthiness evaluation. This increase in healthiness evaluation occurs without reductions in food appeal. These effects are mediated by evaluations of freshness. This occurred across three different food types and two mediums (still images and digital videos).

The paper provides an effective tool for social marketers wishing to encourage healthier eating. Specifically, it helps address two problems: low effectiveness of prevalent, information-based appeals to encourage healthy eating; and reduced evaluations of tastiness that normally occur when consumers are convinced food is healthy.

Social marketers can use motion as an effective tool to promote food as healthy. Importantly, this indirect communication avoids the potential pitfall of reduced food appeal. This should help encourage healthier eating. The findings also supports the use of indirect cues as an effective approach to promoting social ends.

Offering a novel, indirect method of enhancing judgments of food healthiness via a simple visual cue. Demonstrating the effect and its underlying mechanism. Providing a way to counter the prevalent “unhealthy = tasty” intuition, a major obstacle to promoting healthy eating. Supporting social marketers’ use of indirect communication to increase the appeal of desirable societal goals. Finally, showing that sensory visual cues can serve as a source of heuristic thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evaluation of cabin crew food safety training using the Kirkpatrick model.

Using a snowballing technique, 26 cabin crew, managers, supervisors and trainers participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Summative content analysis was used to evaluate the data.

In total, 26 respondents from 20 international airlines participated in the study. All respondents agreed that evaluating cabin crew food safety/hygiene issues is important in relation to in-flight food handling; for example, “Training evaluation helps in the improvement of the future training”; “We have an end of course feedback form, either done electronically or on paper and that looks at how the delegates felt the training went, if they came away learning something new, if the environment for learning was right, all sorts of things; the questionnaire is quite comprehensive”; and “Every trainee is given a feedback form to complete”. However, significant failures in food safety training and its evaluation were identified.

The evaluation of cabin crew food safety training shows that it is ineffective in some aspects, including learning achieved and behavioural change, and these can directly impact on the implementation of food safety practices. Evaluation failures may be due to the lack of available time in relation to other cabin crew roles. Further research may consider using a larger sample size, evaluating training effectiveness using social cognition models and assessments of airline and cabin crew food safety culture.

This is the first study that evaluates cabin crew food safety training using the Kirkpatrick model. The findings provide an understanding of the current evaluation of cabin crew food safety training and can be used by airlines for improving and developing effective future food safety training programmes. This, in turn, may reduce the risk of passenger and crew foodborne disease.

This study aims to examine the various effects of two licensing factors – health claims and “FoSHU seal”, which can be appeared on packages only with permission. In the Food for specified health uses (FoSHU) system, Japanese Government controls all health claims on packages of food products for the first time in the world.

In Study 1, the authors investigate the signaling effects of the two licensing factors with a 2 (health claims: yes/no) × 2 (FoSHU seal: yes/no) factorial design. Then, in Study 2, the authors investigate the external effects on alternative brands with a 2 (package of the non-FoSHU brand: similar/dissimilar to the FoSHU brand) × 2 (presentation of the FoSHU brand: yes/no) design.

The results show that food evaluations are affected by the FoSHU seal, indicating that, with the symbolic mark, FoSHU foods can be successfully differentiated from non-FoSHU foods. In contrast, food evaluations are not affected by health claims – health claims have external effects on evaluations of non-FoSHU products in the category if both FoSHU and non-FOSHU products have a similar package.

Although there are many studies regarding the impacts of health claims on food evaluations, they have assumed only US regulatory system and, therefore, have not examined the effects of licensing marks. Also, because Japanese approval system is dissimilar to US regulatory system, the effects of health claims in Japan are different from those in the USA. By analyzing various effects of Japanese system on consumer evaluation of food healthiness, this study contributes to a better understanding of the impacts of the public policy and food marketing on consumer behavior.

Advertising is one of the most important components of food marketing. However, there is uncertainty over the optimal means of convincing consumers to buy a product. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of advertising content comprising text (sensory, functional and symbolic messages) and pictures (product image) on food product evaluation.

Two online experiments investigating strawberry advertisements were performed. Study 1 incorporated only text, whereas study 2 investigated combinations of text and pictures. Analyses of variance were conducted to determine any significant differences among the three texts (sensory, functional and symbolic) and among the combinations of text and pictures.

Study 1 revealed no significant differences. All three texts were well received, which shows the relevance of all the product benefits – sensory, functional and symbolic – for food products. In contrast, study 2 identified significant differences. The data analysis indicated that advertising effectiveness increases with the complementarity of the text and picture. Notably, the combination of the product picture and symbolic text was scored the highest for effectiveness.

The findings provide new insights into advertising design that food firms can use to enhance consumer product evaluations in terms of expected taste, perceived experience and quality, overall attitude and purchase intention. Further, the results contribute to the research stream of food product benefits by highlighting the relevance of sensory, functional and symbolic design elements.