Food choices: What do we learn from combining sensory and economic experiments?

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how sensory and experimental economics techniques can be combined in protocols for investigating the influence of food product characteristics and information on consumers' preferences. Preferences are measured through willingness to pay (WTP) which is elicited by means of incentive mechanisms including real sales of the tested products. After a quick review of incentive mechanisms used in experimental economics, the protocol is described and illustrated by examples from different studies on WTP for wines. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.