Sensory drivers of product-elicited emotions are moderated by liking: Insights from consumer segmentation

The important role of emotions in consumers' food-related decisions motivate ongoing research in this domain, and in the present research attention was directed to an area that remains under-investigated: identifying sensory drivers of product-elicited emotions. Assuming that product-elicited emotions depend on the value individuals attach to the sensory characteristics of products, liking was expected to moderate the sensory drivers of emotions. This motivated an exploration of differences in the emotional associations of consumer groups with different preference patterns, as well as the sensory drivers of product-elicited emotions. Across four studies (123-192 consumers per study), using different product categories, emotion questionnaire variants and consumer populations, support for three hypotheses was established: i) consumers with different preference patterns did not largely differ in how they described the sensory characteristics of products, but they differed in their emotional associations, and differences between segments with different liking patterns were larger for emotional product associations than for sensory product perceptions (H1), ii) differences in the emotional associations depended on the size of the difference in liking between the two groups, although some differences in the emotional associations of samples with similar liking scores were also established (H2), and iii) many of the sensory drivers of emotions differed between consumer segments with different preference patterns (H3). The latter has not previously been demonstrated in this level of detail and supports the growing recognition of segmentation analysis in product-focused consumer research.