1. Introduction
Ethnic foods are often referred to as traditional foods that are unique and familiar to consumers sharing a specific food culture, but are perceived as exotic or unfamiliar to others [
1,
2,
3]. Particular food materials, spices, as well as authentic preparing and cooking processes uniquely developed within a culture, contribute to the ethnic identity of food [
4]. In the past couple of decades, ethnic foods have gained considerable popularity among consumers around the world because of the increased accessibility and exposure to these foods through international trade, immigration, tourism, and media [
5,
6,
7,
8]. Along these trends, a so called “culinary tourism” has been promoted successfully in many countries [
9,
10,
11]. Sauces, including condiments and dressings, are effective vehicles to characterize the cultural identity of a food. Thus, partly driven by the increased popularity of ethnic food consumption, the global market size of sauces was USD 136.24 billion in 2019, and the global compound annual growth rate of sauces is expected to steadily increase by 4.8% from 2015 to 2025 [
12].
Along with these trends, the Korean food industry is also making efforts to globalize traditional Korean food items [
13]. The major countries importing Korean foods are the US, Japan, and China. On the contrary, the Muslim population, although considered as an emerging global market with strong potential in the growth of halal food products, comprises a relatively small sector in the Korean food industry for food exports [
14]. However, companies are seeking opportunities to expand their sales to Muslims. Fermented soy-based products such as soy sauce, fermented chili pepper paste (
gochujang), and fermented soybean paste (
doenjang) are essential seasoning materials to flavor and characterize traditional Korean cuisine [
15,
16]. One of these seasonings is almost always applied to flavor foods in Korean cooking. Among these seasonings, soy sauce has gained familiarity and popularity among consumers worldwide through the successful introduction of Chinese and Japanese cuisines in Western countries. Many studies have investigated the possible application and acceptability of soy sauce by consumers in foreign countries [
17,
18,
19]. Compared with soy sauce, fermented chili pepper paste and fermented soybean paste are relatively new, and their usage is limited among non-Korean consumers.
Investigations of food acceptance and preference under a cross-cultural context have been pursued by many researchers with various aims and scopes during the past several decades [
7,
20,
21,
22]. Factors significantly influencing the cross-cultural variance in food preference and perception were analyzed. Overall, differences in cross-cultural acceptances are often reported when familiarities to the target food item or flavor are culturally different [
7,
23]. Cultural factors seemed to be more influential than genetic variability between subjects in the cross-cultural studies. Psychographic traits [
24], consumption habits [
25], and product information [
26] are some of the other variables studied to understand the cultural differences in food acceptances.
Recently, a check-all-that-apply question format (a.k.a. CATA method) is favorably exercised in the consumer sensory research area to gain insights on the consumer’s perception of a target food product [
27]. The CATA method asks subjects to select all the relevant items from a preselected list of descriptions or terms. The flexible and versatile nature of the method has encouraged a wide usage in marketing for several decades [
28]. Since Adams et al. [
29] introduced the CATA application in the field of sensory science, the method has been commonly used to profile food products in terms of sensory or nonsensory (emotions, product usage, etc.) characteristics [
7,
27,
30]. Providing a list of descriptions or terms to the subjects can motivate them to concentrate more on the product evaluation. Given that the terms are preselected, it is important to carefully select a pool of relevant attributes that subjects would consider during the product evaluation [
31].
Many food cultures derive pleasure from salads and dips. Hence, in the present study, fermented soybean paste and spicy chili pepper paste were incorporated into salad dressing and dipping sauces, respectively, to examine the possibility of exporting these products to non-Asian countries. The sensory acceptability of doenjang-based salad dressings and gochujang-based spicy dipping sauces, both varying in flavor characteristics, were investigated among consumers in Korea, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the US. Korean consumers were selected as a control group. UAE and US consumers served as the target groups because of their precedence in the export of Korean foods. Additionally, the two countries were specifically chosen for their diverse culinary backgrounds, representing the food cultural groups of Middle Eastern Asia and North America, respectively.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Subjects
Consumer subjects who were interested in taste-testing Korean traditional fermented sauce products were recruited from the following three regions: Seoul (Korea), Al Ain (UAE), and Griffin (GA, US) and henceforth termed KOR, UAE, and US consumers, respectively. Consumers were informed that they would be evaluating various types of Korean fermented salad dressing and sauce products. The consumers were students and staffs at the local universities, as well as residents residing in each of the three regions. The experiments were carried out in the sensory labs of Ewha Womans University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Arab Emirates for Korea, UAE, and US regions, respectively. The study included 91 KOR consumers (aged 20–70 years), 60 US consumers (aged 18–68 years), and 70 UAE consumers (aged 18–63 years). The sex and ethnicity information of participating consumers are presented in
Table 1. In this study, the experiments conducted in Korea and the UAE were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Ewha Womans University, and those undertaken in the US were approved by the IRB at the University of Georgia.
2.2. Food Samples
The products of interest included 4 types of salad dressings (based on
doenjang, a Korean fermented soybean paste)—original, sour, nutty, and spicy—and 4 types of dipping sauces (based on
gochujang, a Korean fermented chili pepper paste)—sweet (SW), sour (SO), spicy + sweet (SWSP), and spicy + sour (SOSP). The ingredients and manufacturer information on each product are listed in
Table 2.
2.3. Sample Preparation and Presentation
The samples were prepared based on the sample producer’s guidelines (CJ Cheiljedang, Seoul, Korea). Salad dressing samples were required to be diluted with water before serving. Thus, these were diluted with water at a salad dressing sample-to-water ratio of 8:2 (g/g) for presentation. For spicy dipping sauces, the samples were served as is without any additional preparation. Samples were prepared 24 h before the taste-test experiments. Thirty grams of sample was poured into a disposable container of 7 cm in diameter × 4 cm in height (Samboopack Corp., Incheon, Korea) for KOR and UAE consumers or 59-mL capacity (Dart Container Co., Ltd., Mason, MI, USA) for US consumers, and labeled with a random 3-digit code. All samples were stored in the refrigerator (4 °C) and removed from storage 1 h before testing.
Salad dressing and dipping sauce are rarely consumed on their own [
3,
8] and thus vegetables were served as carrier foods. Lettuce is the most typical vegetable used for making salads, although various vegetables can be used. Thus, romaine lettuce was selected as the carrier food for the salad dressing experiment. On the contrary, when considering dips for vegetable, a wide spectrum of vegetables with very different flavor characteristics can be candidates (carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, celery, etc.). It was shown in a preliminary test that consumers have extremely different preferences for different types of vegetables. Thus, for the dipping experiment, consumers were provided with vegetable options from which they can choose.
For the salad dressing experiment, the heart of the romaine lettuce was removed, and the leaves were cut to about 2–3 cm length. A total of 10 g of romaine lettuce was presented with a disposable fork. For the spicy dipping sauce, the vegetables of choice were English cucumber, baby carrot/carrot, and broccoli. The cucumber was cut into 4 halves horizontally and then divided again into 4 halves vertically. The seeds in the middle were removed. Baby carrots were provided in the US and UAE, while whole carrots were used in Korea. The whole carrot was cut to a similar size of the cucumber segments. The stem of the broccoli was removed, and the floret part was served. In total, 1 stick/flower of cucumber, carrot, and broccoli was provided per sample. The samples and carrier foods were provided separately so that the consumers could apply as much salad dressing or dip to the carrier foods as desired.
2.4. Consumer Taste-Test Procedure
All consumers participated in two consecutive testing sessions, tasting fermented soybean paste-based salad dressing in the first session, and hot pepper paste-based dipping sauce in the second session. This order was chosen because the flavors of the salad dressing samples were considerably milder than those of the spicy dipping sauce samples. However, consumer subjects received the samples in balanced order using factorial design within the 4 salad dressing samples and within the 4 dipping sauce samples. All the KOR and US consumers completed both sessions, but 9 UAE consumers did not complete the evaluation of the dipping sauce samples. There was a 10 min break between the two sessions.
The overall testing procedures were modified from the methods described in the studies of Kim et al. [
16] and Choi et al. [
20]. When tasting each sample, consumers rated the overall, appearance, smell/odor, taste/flavor, and texture liking on a standard 9-point hedonic scale (1 = dislike extremely, 5 = neither like nor dislike, 9 = like extremely) [
32]. Additionally, viscosity (both salad dressing and dipping sauce), saltiness (salad dressing only), and hot and spicy level (dipping sauce only) of each sample were evaluated on a 9-point just-about-right (JAR) scale. Consumers rated their familiarities with the flavors of the samples by checking the levels of agreement with the following statement: “I am familiar with the aroma and flavor of this salad dressing/dipping sauce.” The agreement scale was a 9-point category scale with word categories labeled from 1 = “not familiar at all” to 9 = “extremely familiar.” The reasons for (dis)liking each sample were surveyed using a check-all-that-apply (CATA) method. The CATA list of attributes comprised sensory characteristics and nonsensory characteristics (i.e., holistic and emotional terms). Warm water and unsalted crackers (Carr’s Original Table Water, Carr’s of Carlisle Ltd., Carlisle, UK) were provided to the consumers to cleanse the palate between samples.
2.5. Statistical Analysis
Concerning the acceptance testing data, analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures were performed using the generalized linear mixed (GLM) model to determine the influences of the salad dressing/dipping sauce sample and the consumer’s country of origin on the acceptance. The GLM model used was salad dressing acceptance/intensity/familiarity = sample + country + (sample × country) + (country × panel), and dipping sauce acceptance/intensity/familiarity = sample + country + carrier food + (sample × country) + (sample × carrier food) + (country × carrier food) + (sample × country × carrier food) + (country × carrier food × panel). The effect of sample, country of origin, and carrier food were considered as fixed, while the consumer was designated as a random effect. Duncan’s multiple range test was used for post hoc comparisons of country or sample (
p < 0.05). The one-sample
t-test (two-tailed) was carried out on the intensity data obtained from the JAR scale. The intensity value was tested for its significant difference (at the 95% confidence interval) from the value “5”, which is the JAR midpoint [
33]. Levene’s test was conducted to compare the equality of variances of the liking scores among the 3 countries. Pearson’s correlation analysis was conducted on the overall liking and familiarity ratings.
For CATA data, terms that were selected by more than 25% of the consumers were chosen for further analysis. Correspondence analysis (CA) was undertaken to visually summarize how consumers in the 3 countries perceived the samples. All statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 21 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL, USA), XLSTAT (Addinsoft, Paris, France), and EXCEL 2013 (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, USA).
4. Discussion
The present study investigated the cross-cultural consumer acceptances of salad dressings and dipping sauces made from Korean fermented seasonings. KOR, UAE, and US consumers generally liked dipping sauces eliciting chili spiciness more than salad dressing having a distinct fermented flavor. Protein or carbohydrate-based fermented flavors are difficult to be accepted when the flavor is culturally unfamiliar [
34,
35,
36]. UAE consumers showed the lowest scores for flavor familiarity and mean overall liking of the salad dressing samples among the consumers from the three countries. The unfamiliar fermented flavor of the dressing samples may be responsible for driving the dislike of salad dressings by UAE consumers.
Concerning the preferred flavor types of the salad dressing samples, KOR consumers preferred nutty-flavored samples. Nutty flavor (translated as “goso”) has been reported as one of the most notable and positive flavors appreciated by KOR consumers in Korean cuisines [
37,
38]. This cultural preference for nuttiness seemed to be reflected in the liking for salad dressing with a nutty flavor among KOR consumers. Conversely, a spicy note in the sample elicited a positive response among US and UAE consumers. This result may be in line with the growing popularity of spiciness in ethnic dishes globally [
16,
39,
40]. Additionally, the spicy note in the dressing may have masked the negative fermented flavor in the sample since spiciness has been reported to suppress particular odors, tastes, and flavors [
41,
42,
43]. KOR consumers considered sensory and nonsensory attributes, such as fatty/nutty odor/flavor, traditional flavor, umami taste, and familiarity, as important positive attributes. However, UAE and US consumers considered color, saltiness, new, and easy-to-eat as important positive drivers. KOR consumers perceived spiciness in the dressing samples as “too stimulating”, and this factor acted as a negative driver of liking. In UAE consumers who rated the liking score of the salad dressing samples the lowest, the reasons for disliking the samples were “strange odor/flavor”, “feel uncomfortable”, and other negative holistic or emotional terms. Similar to the results of previous studies [
12,
44], familiarity contributed to the liking ratings of the samples because either the sample with the highest-rated overall liking was also rated the highest in familiarity (KOR consumers) or the sample with the lowest-rated overall liking was also rated the lowest in familiarity (US consumers).
As mentioned above, the dipping sauce samples were generally more liked than the salad dressing samples. There are two possible reasons for this outcome. First, the general liking of a spicy flavor among most of the consumers may have resulted in the relatively higher acceptance ratings for dipping sauce. Our finding corroborates the reports stating that the chili spiciness is widely accepted, and the consumption rate of chili peppers has increased globally [
39]. The second reason could be that by allowing consumers to choose a vegetable to use as a carrier food for the dipping sauce but not for the salad dressing tasting, it may have induced positive attitudes toward the overall dipping sauce evaluation [
45,
46].
Regarding the preferred flavor of dipping sauces, KOR and US consumers significantly liked sweet rather than sour-tasting samples. By contrast, UAE consumers showed tendencies of liking less spicy samples than spicy samples irrespective of whether the sample elicited sourness or sweetness in addition to spiciness. KOR consumers tended to choose sweet, umami, familiar, and mouthwatering descriptors at a higher rate than the US and UAE consumers. Hot and spicy, saltiness, new, and easy-to-eat were favorably selected terms among UAE and US consumers. Most consumers, regardless of their country of origin, tended to dislike samples when they perceived the taste to be “too stimulating” to the senses or “too spicy”.
One of the interesting findings in the present study was the cultural difference in the liking response to the spiciness between the two food types. The presence of spiciness in the salad dressings was positive for UAE and US consumers only. On the contrary, intense spiciness in dipping sauce was a negative driver for UAE consumers, and spiciness intensity was not a critical factor for US and KOR consumers when spiciness was the dominant flavor property. Among the various sensory attributes, spiciness shows the widest variation in individual preference for its presence or intensity level in foods [
47,
48,
49]. This diversity in preference for chili spiciness is due to factors such as diversity in cultural exposure to the flavor, genetic influence, gender, and personal traits. Chili spiciness has been traditionally enjoyed by countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Mainland China, and Korea [
50]. Its popularity in other parts of the world, such as Europe, Middle Eastern Asia, and North America, is relatively recent. It has been observed that the chili pungency can be perceived as aversive when the consumers are not frequently exposed to the stimulus [
51,
52,
53], but that pleasure is learned when the exposure to the stimuli is repeated. Additionally, several studies have reported that frequent chili consumers perceive the burning/spicy intensity of chili as less intense than less frequent chili consumers [
54,
55,
56] and this was partly shown in the present study. That is, those who are not used to spiciness perceive the spiciness to be too intense (i.e., spicy intensity ratings in UAE consumers) compared with those who are exposed to the stimulus frequently (KOR consumers).
As indicated from the results of Levene’s test for equality of variances, which showed significant differences among the three countries, the distribution of overall liking scores within each country provided useful information on understanding the acceptance of samples. Particularly, a bipolar distribution of overall liking ratings was observed in the liking of nutty salad dressing and spicy (SWSP, SOSP) dipping sauce samples evaluated by US consumers. These bipolar distributions imply that consumers had heterogeneous preferences.
5. Conclusions
To summarize and conclude the findings of the study, KOR consumers liked the nutty flavor, whereas UAE consumers preferred the spicy flavor, and US consumers showed comparable levels of liking for spicy, sour, and nutty flavors among the four doenjang-based dressing samples. Consumers in all three countries generally liked dipping sauces more than salad dressings. Both KOR and US consumers liked spicy dipping sauces eliciting a sweet taste. Although UAE consumers did not significantly differentiate the four spicy dipping sauces by liking score, they tended to prefer less spicy samples over spicier samples. Overall, the presence of spiciness and the level of spiciness present in the salad dressings and the spicy dipping sauces were the most critical factors affecting the liking for the tested samples. The acceptances for the spicy-eliciting samples varied with the sauce type, the consumer’s country of origin, and the consumer’s general preference for spiciness. Thus, the optimal spicy level for these types of ethnic salad dressings or dipping sauces has to be carefully verified and tuned to the cultural-culinary backgrounds of the target consumers.
The current study carries several limitations in generalizing the results to a larger group of population due to the following reasons. Consumer subjects in the three countries had a relatively narrow range of age groups and the age group of US consumers was older than that of Korea and UAE consumers. Additionally, the ratio of female and male was unequal. Although the four samples within the salad dressing or dipping sauce experiments were counterbalanced in terms of serving order, salad dressing samples were tasted prior to the dipping sauce samples. Thus, order effect may have been present and somewhat influenced the evaluation of the dipping sauces.
The effect of food neophobic traits of consumers, which has shown to be a significant factor in delineating the liking for a food product [
57], was not particularly investigated in the present study due to the limited numbers of consumer subjects. Further investigations on the relationships between individual’s psychographic attitudes, such as food neophobic trait and the liking of ethnic foods in cross-cultural contexts, may offer a useful insight in developing marketing strategies for these food items in different countries.