Journal
POSTHARVEST BIOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY
Volume 146, Issue -, Pages 99-107Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.postharvbio.2018.08.014
Keywords
Fruit quality; Defects; Bruising; Sorting; Consumer research; Postharvest; Appearance
Categories
Funding
- New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited's Strategic Science Investment Fund (SSIF) from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
- Espacio Interdisciplinario (Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay)
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Apples, one of the most popular fruit worldwide, are globally traded and consumers benefit from hyper-competition in the industry. To remain profitable, producers must offer very high quality fruit at competitive prices. This research sought to better understand consumers' quality perceptions. We focused on external appearance, a readily available quality cue. Insights were gained from a categorization task where participants sorted images of apples based on perceived quality. A comparison between experts' (n = 37) and consumers' (n = 297) quality perceptions based on external appearance revealed high similarity. Both groups considered fruit with minor defects as inferior to fruit with no external defects. The consumers, who represented four different countries (72-76 per country; loosely regarded as a proxy for the global population of apple consumers), perceived the quality of the apples very similarly. Three quality groupings were established, representing apples with high quality, minor defects and major defects, respectively. The last-mentioned grouping consisted of any apple that showed signs of rot or mold, or where there the skin had been cut. Blemishes and odd shapes were generally regarded as minor defects. Both types of defects were associated with negative hedonic expectations, which increased with the severity of the external defect. The implications for consumers' purchase-related cognitions were clear and associated with rejecting consumption. This has associated implications for efforts to reduce food waste.
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