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The role and importance of arts festivals are well documented within the festival and events literature. Art and culture, as well as the subsequent enhancement thereof, are especially significant in multicultural societies. However, little is known regarding the role of culinary experiences within an arts festival setting. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The case study was a well-known and popular Afrikaans national arts festival held annually in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Visitors to three distinct tasting experiences (brandy, whisky and sparkling wine, including Méthode Cap Classique), offered as part of the festival programme, were surveyed.

In the analyses, 292 completed questionnaires were included, which revealed three managerial factors for a successful tasting experience, as well as six tasting experience dimensions. In all cases, the experiences exceeded the expectations. This research greatly contributes towards the body of knowledge regarding tasting experiences at national arts festivals, an aspect that has not been researched to date.

Based on the results, practical implications are provided to enhance the current tasting experiences as well as visitor loyalty. This research is a stepping stone towards understanding the needs and preferences of the visitors, as well as identifying how the festival can capitalise on delivering these experiences.

This research identified for the first time the factors that contribute to a memorable tasting experience, as well as evaluated the tasting experience dimensions.

Part of the steady decline of wine consumption in France might be attributed to a growing criticism of the level of alcohol content of the wines. Recent declarative surveys suggest that consumers consider favourably wines with lower contents of alcohol. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate experimentally the consumers' acceptability of a low‐alcohol wine, and to analyse the impact of the “low‐alcohol” cue on perceived quality.

Using the literature on expectancy disconfirmation and cognitive categorization, we have set up an experimental design involving blind tasting and full information tasting of three low‐alcohol wines and three regular wines on a sample of 73 consumers.

When comparing hedonic scores at blind level, there was no significant difference between low‐alcohol wine and regular wine. Expectations created by the “low‐alcohol” cue have a negative (but unsignificant) impact on overall evaluation, and individual characteristics have almost no effect on wine evaluation.

The small size of the sample group of respondents and the quasi‐experimental context with no control group were the major limitations of this study.

For the wine marketers, the most interesting result was that reducing the alcohol content to 9 per cent did not seem to result in the product being devalued significantly. The study highlighted the overwhelming effect of the sensory quality of the wine on perceived quality. “Low‐alcohol” cue creates a low quality expectation, but has only a small influence on perceived quality.

Research on cross-modal sensory interactions has shown that visual aspects of food can influence consumer's expectation and perception of taste, mouthfeel and liking. This paper aims to investigate the effects of a rounded (“bouba”) and a squared (“kiki”) shape on expected and perceived sweetness, bitterness, creaminess and liking of chocolates.

Brazilian consumers (N = 230) divided into two groups of 115 individuals each evaluated five chocolates containing 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70% of cocoa. One of the groups evaluated all formulations in the rounded shape and the other in the squared shape. Results were analysed with mixed multivariate analysis of variance (mixed-MANOVA) between shapes, repeated-measures MANOVA between pre- and post-tasting and Pearson's correlation analysis was performed between liking ratings and sweetness, bitterness and creaminess confirmation/disconfirmation.

The study found significant effects (p < 0.05) of shape on expected and perceived creaminess but not on other attributes; of cocoa percentage (30, 40, 50, 60 and 70%) on all four attributes; and time (pre- and post-tasting) on sweetness, bitterness and liking but not creaminess. Finally, it found significant negative correlations between the creaminess difference indices and the liking ratings for the 30, 50 and 60% chocolates.

This study reports that consumers may expect and perceive chocolates as creamier in a rounded shape than in an angular shape and that if the expectation of creaminess is not confirmed by sensory perception, acceptability may be negatively affected.

Disconfirmation of expectations is the mismatch between the expected and blind evaluation of a product. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation between expected and perceived value (quality), focusing on wines from the French regions with varying levels of notoriety and image content.

From the consumer's point of view, the hedonic evaluation of a product under full information (intrinsic and extrinsic) is considered as a measure of perceived quality. Generally, the perception of the quality of a product differs according to tasting conditions (blind, or full information). Based on previous literature on food marketing it is assumed that the change of preference between blind and full conditions reflects the influence of extrinsic information (here, the region of origin). Two types of results can be expected from disconfirmation: “assimilation” occurs when the final evaluation of the product changes in the direction of the expectation provided by the extrinsic cue, whereas “contrast” occurs when this change is contrary to the expectation. Five wines selected among regions with different reputation levels, and two groups of consumers, characterized by their level of expertise (trained/untrained students) are used in the experiment.

The experiments suggest that disconfirmation may be used to measure and interpret region of origin equity on a behavioural basis rather than just attitudinal.

Provides information resulting from research on disconfirmation of expectations.

Beverage serving affects consumers’ taste and price perceptions. Therefore, the correct selection of the presentation cues is essential when a consumer evaluates a product. This study aims to determine how haptic (weight) and visual (colour) cues of drinking vessels affect the taste and price perception of coffee.

The authors created three different experimental designs. Given that coffee is a popular drink among the younger population, the authors invited undergraduate students in the 18–24 age group into this study. The participants tasted the same coffee from cups differ in weight (heavy and normal) and colour (congruent, incongruent and neutral), after which their opinions about the taste and price were recorded.

According to the results, increasing the weight of the cup creates a more positive perception of the smell and density of the coffee. Moreover, coffee served in a heavy cup was perceived to be more expensive than in other cups. The authors also found that incongruent cups received a lower score in all evaluations regarding taste perception. In the final experiment, the authors used the weight and colour manipulations together. According to the participants, the most fragrant coffee was perceived from a heavy and congruent cup.

Small sample is one of the limitations of this study. Future studies could be conducted with bigger and more diverse sample using different kinds of coffee beans.

It will be appropriate for coffee producers to design the cups in light of the said results.

The paucity in the existing literature of sensory marketing studies using hot drinks is remarkable, especially takeaway coffee, which is becoming more popular with an increasing number of coffee chains, and needs to be examined in detail.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main factors that may affect Italian consumers’ willingness to eat insects. Italy is a fairly special case among Western countries: in many Italian regions, there is old traditional food with insects.

Data come from a sample of 456 consumers living in four Italian regions. The empirical investigation involves several steps: modification of class distributions to obtain a balanced sample; model estimation using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator; model evaluation using out-of-sample classification performance measures; and estimation of the “effect” of each explanatory variable via average predictive comparisons. The uncertainty associated with the whole procedure is evaluated using the bootstrap.

The interviewed consumers are generally unwilling to eat insect-based food. However, factors such as previous experience, taste expectations and attitude towards both new food experiences and sustainable food play an important role in shaping individual inclination towards eating insects.

The sample analysed in this study is not representative of the whole national population, as it happens in most papers dealing with entomophagy.

The paper revisits the issue using a relatively large sample and sophisticated statistical methods. The likely average effect of each explanatory variable is estimated and discussed in detail. The results provide interesting insights on how to approach a hypothetical Italian consumer in view of the possible development of a new market for edible insects.

A product colour plays an important role in consumers’ preferences. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the impact of the three-dimensional character of colour (brightness, saturation and vividness) on children’s behaviour towards a food product and as a source of well-being.

Two experiments were conducted. Study 1 was conducted with 62 children and used four visuals of syrup presenting two colours (red/green) and two variations of vividness (vivid/dim). Study 2 was conducted with 70 children and used four pictures of stewed apples and four pictures of pouches to test the influence of each dimension of colour on children’s preferences for the product and the product packaging.

Results show that the three-dimensional character of colour plays an important role in children’s gustatory inferences and well-being.

The study is restricted to one food product (in each study) habitually consumed by children. Other products could be investigated to show how colour can contribute to children’s well-being.

The paper addresses the issue of well-being as a potential brand-positioning element.

The paper suggests new avenues to use the brightness/saturation or vividness of a product or packaging colour as a potential element to arouse positive sensations that generate children’s well-being even when the product is not a preferred one.

This works initiates creative thinking concerning the impact of a product colour on children consumers.

The need for better links to the market as well as improved internal sharing and use of market information has been stressed as central for market‐oriented product development. This paper aims to suggest a conceptual model for the identification of relevant market information (based on the understanding of consumers' vertical and horizontal decision structure) combined with considerations on effective internal use of the information.

The suggested model is applied in case studies in an action research project, and experiences with the application are discussed.

The paper finds that by using a means‐end chain approach it is possible to collect market information which can comply with the requirements for market information regarding quality cues and purchase motives. Furthermore, the process requirements for the internal use of information in product development are also fulfilled since the development teams recognize the value of the information and actively use it in their product development decision making. However, the means‐end approach cannot (in its present form) reveal experienced quality since the approach includes no trying of the product concepts.

The proposed model gathers and simplifies the requirements for improved market‐oriented product development of fast‐moving consumer goods and can remind development teams of considering the situation before and after product experience as well as the different levels of abstraction in consumers' minds. At the same time they are reminded that this information should feed into the process of making decisions in product development.

Here the authors investigate the effects of a visual color cue (brown color) on saltiness expectations, emotional responses and purchase intention of commercial soy sauce products.

The study enrolled 100 participates, and three sauce colors (light brown, medium brown and dark brown) were used as treatments in this experimental design research. The data analysis was done by a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach with repeated measures.

The findings indicated that, for the medium and dark brown sauces, the final model revealed a positive effect of sauce color intensity on saltiness expectation, a positive impact of saltiness expectation on emotion and a positive impact of emotion on purchase intention with statistically indifferent factor loadings. Hence, both the medium and dark brown colors soy sauces were the preferred choices for consumers. However, for the light brown color, the test result was unsatisfactory.

Several empirical studies have identified visual cues as useful for sodium reduction. However, from a marketing perspective, a causal relationship between the color intensity and a customer's purchase intention has not been explored in soy sauce products using an experimental design concept and SEM.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate situational factors (i.e. social risk) and negative emotions (e.g. shame and guilt) on consumers’ purchase intentions for premium private labels (PPLs) vs national brands (NBs) at discounter (Lidl) in the UK, and the underlying process of this effect.

The authors conduct a 2 (social risk) × 2 (brand type) between-subjects design experiment employing a Qualtrics online panel in the UK.

The study shows that NBs still have the edge over PPLs when consumers shop for socially risky situations, which is due to higher product expectations of NBs, and a moderated mediation shows that this effect is more pronounced among consumers that feel negative emotions when shopping at Lidl.

This study included leading NBs, which differ in terms of price compared to selected PPLs. Researchers should include pricing information as an additional factor and investigate Lidl’s options to deal with negative emotions in the online setting.

The results help brand managers to understand consumer reactions toward PPLs vs NBs at the discounter in UK.

NBs have recently joint rather than fight discounters’ product assortment, this study contributes to understand the moderating impact of negative emotions and product expectations as the driving force in consumers’ purchasing decision.