Department of Agricultural Economics, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modeling, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
Food Res Int. 2022 Jul;157:111299. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2022.111299. Epub 2022 Apr 27.
Emoji have been proposed as a way to get additional insights in how consumers perceive food products. Recent works have indicated that emoji are able to provide distinctive emotional associations with food products, regardless of whether one is using the check-all-that-apply (CATA) or the rate-all-that-apply (RATA) scaling approach. Typically, in examining emotional associations one can work with either a general list which can be used with all food products or a product-specific emotion list. To date, a comparison between the performance of a general and product-specific emoji list with adults is lacking. Moreover, it is unclear to which extent emotional data of emoji help to better predict the actual food choice of adult consumers. Using five samples of chocolates, this study compared the use of a general list of 39 emoji with a product-specific list of 20 emoji (based upon input of 32 consumers). In total, 138 consumers assessed the samples using the general list while 136 consumers evaluated the samples with the product-specific emoji list. The RATA approach was used for the evaluation of the samples and the actual food choice was registered as participants received a snack portion of the chosen sample to take home. Results indicated that, considering the frequency of selection, 10 emoji discriminated between the samples for both the general and product-specific lists. Similar results were obtained when considering the rating intensities. Including emoji did not lead to a significant increase in the food choice prediction regardless the type of list used. However, emoji data obtained from the product-specific emoji list was able to predict the food choice as accurate as the liking data when using the RATA intensity scores. This study suggests that both general and product-specific emoji lists are able to generate distinguishing emotional profiles for chocolate samples. While further research is necessary with other food products and measurement methods (e.g. CATA), this study proposes that emoji measurements might be an alternative to liking data in order to be better understand of consumers' food choice.
表情符号已被提议作为一种方法，可以深入了解消费者对食品的看法。最近的研究表明，无论使用全选（CATA）还是全选评级（RATA）方法，表情符号都能够为食品提供独特的情感联想。通常，在研究情感联想时，可以使用适用于所有食品的通用列表，也可以使用特定于产品的情感列表。迄今为止，成人使用通用和特定于产品的表情符号列表的性能之间的比较还缺乏。此外，表情符号的情感数据在多大程度上有助于更好地预测成人消费者的实际食物选择还不清楚。本研究使用了五个巧克力样本，比较了使用 39 个通用表情符号列表和 20 个特定于产品的表情符号列表（基于 32 位消费者的输入）的效果。共有 138 位消费者使用通用列表评估了样本，而 136 位消费者使用特定于产品的表情符号列表评估了样本。使用 RATA 方法评估样本，参与者收到所选样本的小吃部分带回家。结果表明，考虑到选择的频率，在通用列表和特定于产品的列表中，有 10 个表情符号可以区分样本。当考虑评分强度时，也得到了相似的结果。无论使用哪种类型的列表，包括表情符号都不会导致对食物选择的预测显著增加。然而，当使用 RATA 强度评分时，从特定于产品的表情符号列表中获得的表情符号数据能够像喜好数据一样准确地预测食物选择。本研究表明，通用和特定于产品的表情符号列表都能够为巧克力样本生成有区别的情感档案。虽然还需要使用其他食品和测量方法（例如 CATA）进行进一步的研究，但本研究提出，表情符号测量可能是喜好数据的替代方法，以便更好地理解消费者的食物选择。
