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The purpose of this paper is to provide further insight into Chinese wine consumers’ preference, grasp the regional sensory preference differences of China and build up a predictive model for wine consumers’ sensory preferences.

The study involved 3,421 Chinese wine consumers in the survey. Classified statistics were conducted to excavate regional differences of wine consumers’ sensory preferences. By analyzing influencing factors, prediction models for consumers’ sensory attribute preferences were constructed on the basis of multivariate disorder logistic regression method.

Empirical research showed that the wine with the following sensory attributes was the most preferred by Chinese consumers: dry red, refreshing and soft taste, still type, moderate aroma degree and mellow aroma, and sweet wine was also popular. Consumers’ preference varied from region to region. The proposed predicting method of the study realized more than 70 percent accuracy when conducting prediction for color, sweetness, aroma type and flavor preferences.

By shedding light on the latest sensory attribute preferences of Chinese wine consumers, this study will help wine industry participants conduct market segmentation based on the diversification of consumers’ preferences. The wine enterprises can gain guidance from the results to conduct market positioning, adjust strategies and provide specific production for target wine consumers.

Based on the actual situation of Chinese wine market, this study defines sensory attribute indexes of wine from the perspective of wine consumers and presents the most recent comprehensive research on the sensory preferences of Chinese wine consumers through a nationwide survey.

The formulation and marketing of new food products are very complex and there are many interacting influences on consumer acceptance, e.g. the person, the food product and the environment. Market analysis and sensory analysis were used to determine consumer preferences for Cheddar‐type cheeses. Consumers’ attitudes, perceptions and purchase behaviour were investigated by means of a structured questionnaire. Eight Cheddar‐type cheeses were objectively assessed by a trained panel using descriptive sensory profiling, and, in parallel, were hedonically rated by 100 “naïve” consumers. Preference mapping was used to illustrate the subjective sensory data before the “naïve” consumers were segmented into homogeneous groups using hierarchical cluster analysis. Five focus groups, representing different socio‐economic categories, investigated in‐depth influences on preferences and purchase behaviour. Cheddar‐type cheese was the most frequently purchased and preferred cheese, and taste was the most important attribute influencing the purchase decision. Consumers preferred a premium cheese described as “creamy” and “mouthcoating” and least liked a reduced‐fat cheese described as “rancid” and “rubbery”. The focus groups helped explain issues that arose in both the questionnaire and sensory analysis. This study showed that a combination of market and sensory analysis gave a more valuable explanation of consumer acceptance of Cheddar‐type cheese than either method could on its own. However, relationships were determined by observation rather than mathematically and therefore this integration must be further developed in order to build a predictive model for this product.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide empirical evidence of the relationship between specific sensory motivations (i.e. flavor) and the development of preference for food, beverages or brands by preteen consumers; and second, to compare the three age groups within the concrete operations stage toward the hypothesis contrast that states that the higher the cognitive development, the more recognized and recalled a brand will be.

The research techniques implemented were observation (exploratory phase) and personal survey using a paper and pencil questionnaire. The food products and beverages, brands, jingles and isotypes used were based on a convenience sample of 131 lunch boxes. A sample of 682 preteens aged 6–11 in the concrete operation stage obtained by convenience and snowball sampling participated.

When choosing one product or brand over the other, the results highlight flavor as compared with other more secondary sensory motivations, and there are clear differences between the younger and older age groups. In respect of advertising recall and brand recognition, the older age group shows higher frequencies of correct jingle-brand and isotype-brand association.

Despite product and brand consumption in the child segment relevance further motivational research is needed to identify the factors that influence preferences. The results obtained show that there are preferences and motives for product consumption that can be attributed to the functioning of the senses by the preteen consumer as well as differences within the concrete operations stage.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into European organic consumers’ attitudes towards natural food and in their sensory preference for it. It explores whether there is any evidence for a latent dimension that represents consumers’ attitudes towards naturalness and which aspects can be assigned to this dimension. However, the main scope is to investigate whether attitudes towards naturalness are able to predict the liking of natural food.

Sensory tests of strawberry yoghurt are combined with consumer information obtained by means of a standardised questionnaire. About 1,800 organic consumers from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland were asked to blindly test two strawberry yoghurt samples that differed only in their absence/presence of an aroma additive.

On average, the consumers revealed a positive attitude towards natural food, but a negative sensory preference for the more natural yoghurt sample. Correlations between these two variables indicate that for most countries one cannot conclude that more naturalness-oriented consumers actually prefer the taste of more naturally flavoured yoghurts. This finding is interpreted as an attitude-liking gap.

More research is necessary in order to clarify the reasons for the attitude-liking gap, since the authors can only speculate about these. Also, suitable data are needed to confirm the assumption made here that the naturalness of strawberry yoghurt can be determined by the degree of flavour intensity, especially against the background that the sensory skills of consumers are usually weak.

No attempt has been undertaken so far to test the claim that natural food products taste better and whether consumers with a positive attitude towards naturalness actually prefer the taste of a natural product over the taste of a more processed one. The present study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the preference for naturalness in a cross-national context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a people-centred, design-led approach to the different needs and aspirations of adults with autism could help inform the design of space, objects and activities for individuals in their own homes to enhance everyday life experiences. There are dozens of studies that have reported the health benefits associated with good design and the Kingwood Trust set out to research what that might mean for the adults with autism it supports.

The paper describes three projects: Housing Design, Garden Design and Exploring Sensory Preferences whose design interventions were realised through a process of design ethnography, to include and work with the people that Kingwood support who have limited verbal speech and learning disabilities. Participatory observation, co-design workshops, interviews, visual probes and mapping tools were created to gather insights about how a person perceives and engages with the physical environment, with a particular focus on their sensory sensitivities and special interests.

The outcome of the project is a holistic, design-led approach to identifying the sensory preferences and special interests of adults with autism to inform the design of residential accommodation. A second project will be published at a later date, which will test and evaluate the effectiveness of the design interventions described in this paper as part of a PhD by practice supported by Kingwood Trust.

Autistic adults with limited verbal speech and additional learning disabilities, are often excluded from design research. This paper bridges this gap by selecting and adapting design methods that invite the people that Kingwood support to be active participants within the design process. The revised DSM-5 is an important milestone that puts the sensory environment back onto the roadmap within autism research, however the relationship between people with autism and the physical environment is a relatively under-researched area. This paper bridges this gap in research and illustrates how an autistic person's interaction and reaction to their home environment, can create understanding, tangible insights and clues to inform the design and adaptation of environments to reduce triggers of anxiety, making them more comfortable, enjoyable and meaningful for that person.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the appropriateness of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to measure consumers’ acceptance and preference for eggs enriched with omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids as a health claim and to compare its results with the traditional nine-point hedonic scale.

The AHP was used as a multi-criteria decision analysis. Data were obtained from a face-to-face questionnaire completed by 122 consumers in a controlled environment in Cataluña (Spain).

Results showed the capacity of the AHP to analyse consumers’ acceptance and preferences. An agreement between the AHP and the nine-point scale was found showing that n-3 enriched eggs had lower flavour acceptance, conventional eggs had higher yolk colour acceptance, and conventional and the free-range eggs had similar and higher odour acceptance than the other egg types. The most important attributes that determine preferences for egg purchase were the type and the egg price followed by the origin and the egg size.

The AHP approach seems to be a reliable tool to evaluate consumers’ hedonic preferences. However, further testing on other food products with larger sample size is needed.

The AHP methodology has been widely used in many fields in the last decades, but to the knowledge, not in the sensory field. In the Spanish market, studies that analyse consumers’ preferences and acceptance of eggs are scarce, and new insights are needed particularly regarding n-3 enriched eggs.

The aim of the present study was to reveal if sensory properties of smoked food could be considered as decisive in the determination of one product’s preference over another. In addition to this, this work tries to clarify whether the flavour obtained in commercial smoked products was noticed and clearly recognized. This study consisted of two parts; first, a preference testing without physical products (recalled preference) presented using a nine‐point hedonic scale, and second, a difference testing with selected products using the triangular test. Consumers showed a preference for non‐smoked products, particularly for cheese, sausages and chips. The first preference dimension of the internal preference mapping (MDPREF) analysis accounted for 74.6 per cent of total variation indicating overall agreement about likings relating these products, with cheese being the most acceptable overall. Analyzing triangular test results it may be concluded that other factors but sensory ones must be defining consumer representations of smoked food, without a correspondence with its real organoleptic properties.

It is known that the consumption of fruits and vegetables in children is declining despite wide-spread national and international policy attempts to increase consumption. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of children’s consumption of fruits and vegetables so as to facilitate better health education targeting.

In this qualitative descriptive exploratory study, peer group interviews were undertaken with 18 girls and 18 boys, aged 8-11, from schools in the Manawatu region of New Zealand.

The results show that children’s consumption of fruits and vegetables is dependent on balancing risk and reward. Children know and understand the importance of eating fruits and vegetables; however, the perceived risks are typically the prevailing determinant of consumption. These perceived risks often stem from children’s uncertainty about whether the fruits and vegetables will meet the child’s sensory preferences. To mitigate the risks perceived in eating fruits and vegetables, children employ a range of avoidance strategies.

This study’s results indicate that a model of “associated” risk is a valuable tool to explain children’s fruit and vegetable consumption and preference behaviour and to assist in the development of future health education intervention campaigns.

For a better understanding of the preferences and differences of young consumers in emerging wine markets, this study aims to propose a clustering method to segment the super-new generation wine consumers based on their sensitivity to wine brand, origin and price and then conduct user profiles for segmented consumer groups from the perspectives of demographic attributes, eating habits and wine sensory attribute preferences.

We first proposed a consumer clustering perspective based on their sensitivity to wine brand, origin and price and then conducted an adaptive density peak and label propagation layer-by-layer (ADPLP) clustering algorithm to segment consumers, which improved the issues of wrong centers' selection and inaccurate classification of remaining sample points for traditional DPC (DPeak clustering algorithm). Then, we built a consumer profile system from the perspectives of demographic attributes, eating habits and wine sensory attribute preferences for segmented consumer groups.

In this study, 10 typical public datasets and 6 basic test algorithms are used to evaluate the proposed method, and the results showed that the ADPLP algorithm was optimal or suboptimal on 10 datasets with accuracy above 0.78. The average improvement in accuracy over the base DPC algorithm is 0.184. As an outcome of the wine consumer profiles, sensitive consumers prefer wines with medium prices of 100–400 CNY and more personalized brands and origins, while casual consumers are fond of popular brands, popular origins and low prices within 50 CNY. The wine sensory attributes preferred by super-new generation consumers are red, semi-dry, semi-sweet, still, fresh tasting, fruity, floral and low acid.

Young Chinese consumers are the main driver of wine consumption in the future. This paper provides a tool for decision-makers and marketers to identify the preferences of young consumers quickly which is meaningful and helpful for wine marketing.

In this study, the ADPLP algorithm was introduced for the first time. Subsequently, the user profile label system was constructed for segmented consumers to highlight their characteristics and demand partiality from three aspects: demographic characteristics, consumers' eating habits and consumers' preferences for wine attributes. Moreover, the ADPLP algorithm can be considered for user profiles on other alcoholic products.

As a basis for development of new, and rationalisation of existing products, consumer preferences in commercial filter coffees were examined in a quantitative approach with multivariate mapping. Coffees were brewed from 12 ground bean blends and served to 150 consumers as drunk normally – black, whitened and/or sweetened. In a complete block design with two sessions of six coffees, employing randomisation to reduce order effects, hedonic data on a five‐point scale were collected then processed using Q‐mode principal component analysis yielding preference maps for each presentation. Conventional descriptive profiling provided information on blend characters allowing soft modelling to determine sensory attributes driving preference scoring. From univariate data analyses, gender was a significant factor for presentation style: addition of milk increased preference scores for blends in males and sugar reduced preference ratings for females. The outcome was a series of consumer segmentations for different coffee presentations.