2.2. Consumer Studies
Two experiments were performed to evaluate consumer perceptions of the commercial apple juices using different complementary methodologies. All of the participants declared to consume apple juices at least several times a month and to have apple juice as the first preference among fruit juices. No ethical approval was required for this study. The first experiment was performed in laboratory conditions and the second experiment online. The experiments were conducted as follows:
Experiment 1. A group of 96 consumers of apple juices participated in the laboratory sensory study (64.6% female and 35.4% male). The participants were recruited from staff and students of the Poznań University of Economics and Business based on their availability and interest in participation in the study. Of this number, 55.2% were under 25 years old, 36.5% were between 26 and 45 years old, and 8.3% were over 45 years old. The same group of consumers examined the quality of apple juice samples in different exposure conditions. To prevent communications between the members of the consumer panel, they were informed about the rules of the experiment, each person occupied a separate cubicle, and the sessions were supervised.
Two sessions were held over two consecutive weeks. Three types of data were gathered with the same group of consumers: (1) overall liking of the samples in blind-testing conditions, (2) expected liking of juices in packages, and (3) overall liking of the samples in an informed testing conditions; all samples were evaluated on 9-point hedonic scales (1 = dislike extremely, 5 = neither like nor dislike, and 9 = like extremely). The samples were presented to the consumers following a balanced rotation scheme. In blind-testing experiments, juices were coded by three-digit random numbers.
Fifty milliliters of each beverage were served to consumers at 20 °C in transparent plastic containers in blind and informed sensory evaluations, respectively, without and with packages. Mineral water was available during studies. The results of this experiment were already presented in our previous paper [
28], where blind liking scores were discussed in detail and the relationships between the consumer liking and the physicochemical and sensory properties of juices were determined.
In an expected liking evaluation, consumers were asked to inspect full packages of eight apple juices and to score their expected sensory liking. To evaluate spontaneous perception of the labels, without making participants focus on specific aspects, they were asked to answer check-all-that-apply (CATA) questions with terms describing the product characteristics: natural, artificial, tasty, tasteless, not very healthy, very healthy, expensive, inexpensive, a familiar product, an innovative product, and a trendy product. Consumers were asked to check all the terms they considered appropriate to describe each of the products.
Experiment 2. A group of 171 consumers (68.8% female and 31.2% male) participated in the online study using Attensee software (
https://www.attensee.com). Of these, 72.9% were under 25 years old, 23.0% were between 26 and 45 years old, and 4.1% were over 45 years old.
Attensee is an application used for the study of visual attention, that mimics an eye-tracker [
29]; it provides an interface for computers and tablets and does not require any special hardware. This innovative approach to record human information lets one see what consumers look at on labels, packaging, or pictures. To get the required information, the reference areas (RA) on packaging and labels should be marked, and the percentage of consumers focusing their attention on these RA are recorded [
30]. Based on these results, final calculations of the visual path tracking parameters may be made. The following RA were used in our experiments: brand names, logos, pictograms, photos, tables and lists of nutritional values, slogans regarding the content of pro-health ingredients, eco/bio labeling, and packaging size statement.
This experiment was conducted online. Consumers were asked to take part in the study via social media, and after agreeing, they received an individual link to the online experiment and were informed that the study involved the simulation of visual perception on a computer screen by means of cursor movements. The participants used the mouse pointer to bring certain parts of the screen into clarity (focused circle 2 cm in diameter). The software updated the information in real time as participants changed their area of focus and the way of exploration. After receiving instructions and doing some trial runs, participants performed the actual test. First, an image of all of the analyzed products on the shop shelf was presented on a computer screen for 45 s, and then the images of individual juice labels were presented, each for 30 s. The sequence of showing the individual labels was proportional and randomized across participants to eliminate the order effects. Each of the participants examined an image with all of the products (shelf picture), and randomly selected four of the eight individual product images. The photographic images of juice packages (with 4592 × 3056 pixels resolution) were captured using a digital camera (Sony A3056, Tokyo, Japan).
The Attensee software can also produce different types of questionnaires. Thus, the participants were asked to answer a check-all-that-apply questionnaire with the terms describing the product, the same as in Experiment 1.