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Evoked consumption context matters in food-related consumer affective research
Evoked consumption context matters in food-related consumer affective research
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Betina Piqueras-Fiszman*, Sara R. Jaeger† *Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands, †The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand
26.1
Introduction
Looking back several decades, there has been an evolution of focus in Sensory and Consumer Research, from more analytical measurements, such as sensory data, to hedonic/consumer data, such as liking and purchase intention, and, more recently, emotions and wellbeing (e.g., Jaeger, 2006; Jaeger et al., 2017; King et al., 2015; Tuorila, 2007). In parallel, there has been an evolution from controlled settings, such as laboratory conditions to more natural or real-world contexts, and in general, a greater appreciation of the role of situational influences of food-related consumer behavior ( Jaeger et al., 2017; K€ oster, 2009; Meiselman, 1992; Schutz, 1988). When measuring hedonic aspects of food consumption in the latter conditions, the findings suggest that we like (or enjoy) foods more when we consume them in conditions that we consider as favorable and appropriate (e.g., Delarue & Boutrolle, 2010; Edwards, Meiselman, Edwards, & Lesher, 2003; Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017; Posri & Macfie, 2008). The most common underlying assumption is shared across the existing literature: the closer one feels to a situation that is appropriate and familiar (or realistic for the subject), the better the hedonic evaluation is. However, results are mixed, since not all studies that have simulated an appropriate environment have showed that this enhanced environment led to higher hedonic responses compared to a Central Location Test (CLT) (e.g., Petit & Sieffermann, 2007). Along the same line of thought, one would also expect the same pattern or results to be observed with emotion-related responses, and with broader measures such as satisfaction or enjoyment. These latter measures depend, to a larger extent, on the context, whereas hedonic questions focus mainly on the characteristics of the food product (i.e., “how much do you like this product?”). With regards to collecting emotion responses evoked during food consumption, the need for contextual aspects becomes even more apparent. “Emotions are context specific” (Richins, 1997). Consumer researchers aim to observe the effect of a (food/beverage) product on people’s emotional state, but in order to see that effect, information about the baseline emotional state is needed. As one can imagine, this emotional state is dependent on, for instance, the weather, the company, the location, Context. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-814495-4.00026-X Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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and/or the time of the day. If contextual information is not given, data interpretation might be ambiguous ( Jaeger, Cardello, & Schutz, 2013), or simply, very different from what they would experience in a natural setting. It is for this reason that in the case of emotion research in a laboratory setting, contextual information becomes more relevant. Needless to say, this contextual information will never equate the complexity of real-world contexts, nor do we assume that the emotional responses obtained will be the same. Nevertheless, we can say that mentally simulating a situation does provide some baseline in consumer research and contributes to putting people in a specific mindset. In fact, the scenario paradigm is an established approach in consumer research (e.g., Bolton & Alba, 2012). This chapter focuses on the influence of contextual aspects, evoked in laboratory or online studies, on consumer’s evaluations of emotion or satisfaction towards food products (see Edwards, Hartwell, & Giboreau, 2016, for a review on emotion research in context). We provide a brief overview on the literature about contextual influences on emotion-related responses in laboratory studies. Extending this line of research, we will then present two previously unpublished studies that use scenarios to evoke complex consumption situations. In one study, the focus is on exploring whether creating atmosphere at home enhances an evening meal experience, and in the other study the focus is one investigating if imagery of either positive events or goals, or an enhanced setting, can influence people’s enjoyment of a healthy evening meal.
26.2
The role of consumption context in emotion research in sensory and consumer science
26.2.1 Integrating context and emotion research Extant research approaches for assessing satisfaction and enjoyment with food tend to heavily rely on the use of attitudinal measures, the most common ones being hedonic ratings (judgements of liking/disliking or preference in response to either a food name or a food that is tasted), and behavioral intent ratings (judgements of the probability of purchase or frequency of consumption). However, evaluative judgements made prior to, and during, meals extend beyond liking and preference for food/beverage items. About a decade ago, researchers in the field started considering emotions as responses to food and beverages in laboratory settings (e.g., Spinelli, Masi, Dinnella, Zoboli, & Monteleone, 2013). Two of the pioneers of this new approach were King and Meiselman (2010), who developed a list of emotion words, to be used together with sensory and liking data as part of online, CLT, or laboratory studies on food and beverages. However, as mentioned in the Introduction, the consumption context gives rise to an array of emotions and feelings (positive, negative, or neutral) that influence food choices and modulate the enjoyment of the consumption experience/eating occasion (Desmet & Schifferstein, 2008; Giboreau & Meiselman, 2018; Hartwell, Edwards, & Brown, 2013; Richins, 1997). Therefore, we saw the need of merging the two streams
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of research with the purpose of extending context research beyond hedonics and enhancing emotion research to take account of context, hereby increasing ecological validity and added value. In previous research (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2014a, 2014b) we explored how evoked consumption contexts influence emotional responses (using a checklist emotion questionnaire) towards foods. Before going into details, it is worth describing what exactly we evoked in the different studies; Table 26.1 provides a summary. Throughout our own studies, we varied either one or two contextual dimensions (e.g., time of the day, location) or multiple, depending on the research question. The purpose of the first studies was mainly to provide evidence of the impact, and hence importance, of simply providing respondents with a context in which to imagine themselves consuming that product and to ignore the real circumstances of consumption (i.e., lab setting). In a series of studies, we presented food products and written consumption contexts varying in appropriateness, and showed that the emotion associations can greatly differ when the products are imagined to be consumed three different times (e.g., breakfast, lunch, or dinner). We also found evidence that the use of positive emotion terms was more frequent in those consumption contexts that were considered more appropriate, whereas negative emotion terms were more frequently selected when the context was perceived as less appropriate for the product. We approached this across respondents and by using segmentation, since a moment of the day could be very appropriate for some but not for others (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2015a; see also Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2016a). However, since the topic of appropriateness will be covered in another chapter in this book, we will not go further into details.
26.2.2 Contextual dimensions: More or less? At this stage, one might be thinking that even if we only altered in written form one contextual dimension, in the minds of the respondents many other dimensions might have also changed. For instance, the context “a weekend breakfast” for some could mean a relaxed moment alone at home, and for others, a bustling moment with others in a cafe. Where the breakfast is, the time when it is taking place, who is present, what is eaten, etc. All of these factors exert an influence. That is certainly something we considered when providing these short pieces of contextual information in our studies. Researchers have to do a trade-off according to their research questions. Nevertheless, for the purpose of our research it was enough to demonstrate the impact: that emotional associations to products differed from one consumption context to the other, and also to results without context evocation. In other words, the emotions were not only associated to the product but rather to the consumption of the product, in context. Furthermore, in subsequent similar studies in which these simple uni-dimensional contexts were evoked either with text only or with additional pictorial representations, we found that the appropriateness ratings differed (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2014c). When less detail was provided in the evoked consumption contexts, participants seemed to base
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Table 26.1 Summary of types of situational factors used to evoke context information in emotion-based studies Paper
Study
2014a
Contextual dimension
Other details
Weekend breakfast Afternoon snack After a special dinner
2014b
Study 1
Study 3
Weekend breakfast Afternoon snack After a special dinner Weekday breakfast Packed lunch outdoors Home dinner with friends Special dinner Afternoon snack
Study 1
Special dinner Afternoon snack
Study 2
2014c
WEEK 1: only under three contexts, without stimuli Product-context appropriateness measures WEEK 2: warm-up, no context with stimuli, three contexts with stimuli, DEBQ-e Product-context appropriateness measures
Product-context appropriateness measures
Product-context appropriateness measures
One participant only answered EQ with only one context per product Repeat the exact same task 1 h later
Two treatments: Tasted food + contexts in written format Food image + contexts in written format Product-context appropriateness measures
l
l
Study 2
Weekday breakfast
Three treatments: Fruit only image + contexts in written format Fruit with tableware image + contexts in written format Fruit only image + contexts in written & pictorial Product-context appropriateness measures
l
Packed lunch outdoors Dinner at home with friends
l
l
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their appropriateness ratings and emotion associations on previous experiences of those types of eating occasions, or similar ones. So it could be argued that with less information, or simply changing the key contextual element under focus, respondents are able to rely on their own experience, and are not forced into details which they would find difficult to imagine, and which would therefore affect their emotional response (see Section 26.4 for an extended discussion on this topic). Regarding multi-dimensional contexts (provided explicitly), we conducted several other studies (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2015a) purposefully designed to include different products, different contextual dimensions and presentation formats, different consumer populations, different test locations, and different emotion survey formats. Contexts (or eating occasions as we refer to them) were conceptualized in accordance with the multi-attribute product perspective and hence seen as entities constructed through the combination of different factors/dimensions at different levels (Macht, Meininger, & Roth, 2005). Following this perspective, Macht et al. (2005) suggested that affective responses to food can best be understood as responses to configurations of stimuli of which the food/beverage itself is only a single component. Jaeger, Bava, Worch, Dawson, and Marshall (2011) previously tapped into this notion to develop the “food choice kaleidoscope”, a conceptual framework that promotes the systematic examination of product, person, and context factors in food choice research (see also Gutjar, de Graaf, Palascha, & Jager, 2014). We used several contextual dimensions (from Bisogni et al., 2007) to develop eating occasions ranging from appropriate to inappropriate for each of the two focal product categories: ice-cream, indulgent and emotion-laden (Parker, Parker, & Brotchie, 2006) and an orange, a healthy food with functional benefits (Girard & Mazza, 1998). With the two product categories, we were able to deduce the relative importance that consumers give to the different contextual dimensions when evaluating the appropriateness of the overall eating occasions, and therefore the emotion data, but importantly, the interactions between the contextual dimensions provided (e.g., company with location of consumption). With such an approach, one can identify which contextual aspects consumers would care about when consuming (or choosing to consume) a product and which they would not. That said, readers should remember the trade-off mentioned in the above paragraph and bear in mind that the combinations of contextual dimensions should be realistic and appropriate for the target population. For instance, eating a sandwich for lunch alone in a metro could be realistic for students or business people in the city, but not for people working from home or retired people. Taken together, providing contextual information, be it partial or multidimensional, does provide a frame for consumers who are asked to fill in product emotion questionnaires either in laboratory/CLT settings, or online. If a product is developed to be a “breakfast product”, asking them to vividly imagine they are having breakfast, no matter with whom, or where, will help them to get in a breakfast mindset. According to our findings, the results seem to have more face validity compared to not providing that contextual information.
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26.3
Context
Using sensory imagery to evoke a context and exploring its impact in potential satisfaction, attitudes, and meal choices
26.3.1 Scenarios for context evocation “Imagine that it is a Sunday morning where you are at home preparing breakfast for your family.” This is one example of a written scenario that may be used in consumer research to evoke a specific setting/situation. Another example is: “Imagine that you are in a shop buying a bottle of wine to bring to a shared dinner with good friends.” Scenarios can be even shorter (“Imagine you are eating lunch”), but also longer and/or describe not only a generalized situation but a sequence of events. For example, Jaeger and Meiselman (2004) used written scenarios that encompassed multiple steps in the meal provisioning process to study convenience perceptions. The following was used to convey a Chinese take-out meal: “You order a Chinese meal over the phone and drive the short distance to the restaurant and pick up the food. Fifteen minutes later you return home, transfer the food to a dinner plate and eat the meal. Afterwards, you place dishes in the dishwasher and dispose of any leftovers.” Scenarios can also be less defined and more open to individual interpretation/experiences such as “the usual situation in which you eat this product.” Scenarios originated outside the field of Sensory and Consumer Research and have been used for investigation of a broad range of issues (e.g., the relationship of satisfaction to expectation, product performance, and disconfirmation (Surprenant & Churchill Jr, 1984), service evaluation (Bitner, 1990), customers’ satisfaction with employee effort and competence (Andrzejewski & Mooney, 2016; Mohr & Bitner, 1995), and engagement in creative discussions (Rhisiart, 2013)). In product testing, scenarios can focus on a specific setting or more generally reduce random noise in the experimental setting (Cook & Campbell, 1979). Versatility and ease of implementation are additional benefits that have contributed to scenarios having become € om, Gilbert, K€oster, Mojet, and Wendin accepted as an experimental protocol. Astr€ (2011), Hein, Hamid, Jaeger, and Delahunty (2010, 2012), Hersleth, Monteleone, Segtnan, and Næs (2015) and Lusk, Hamid, Delahunty, and Jaeger (2015) are some papers that illustrate the use of scenarios with different products/settings and contribute to the discourse of these benefits independently of the product used.
26.3.2 Case study 1: Exploring the use of scenarios to evoke enhanced at-home consumption environments This case study, presenting previously unpublished data, illustrates the use of lengthy scenarios to evoke eating experiences. The scenarios used in this research were also more complex than is typical since they also required participants to imagine actions they would take to create a certain eating environment/ experience. Our main aim was to explore whether enhancing their environment at home would be associated with increased positive emotions and enjoyment of evening meals.
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26.3.2.1 Empirical procedures and data analysis Four-hundred-fifty UK adults took part in an online survey and were randomly allocated to one of three experimental conditions that asked them to imagine a dinner meal situation. The control condition (A) was: “It is a weekday. You are alone and are online ordering an evening meal to be delivered to your place of living. The food you choose is nutritionally balanced and something you like. After 20 minutes the food arrives. It looks appetizing and smells good.” In a second condition (B), after the third sentence, the following instruction was added: “When placing the order several add-on options appear. They are not related to the available menu items but have names like ‘A night in the park’, ‘Summer in Italy’, ‘The splendor of Rome’, ‘Sunset by the beach’ and ‘The Scottish Highlands.’ One of these options add only 5% to the total cost of the order and being in the mood to try something new you select ‘Sunset by the beach.’ The rest of the instructions from the delivery company encouraged the customers to recreate their own ‘Sunset by the beach’ atmosphere at home. The third condition (C) was similar to the second one, except that respondents had to imagine that they selected the ‘Summer in Italy’ add-on. Fig. 26.1 details the additional instructions to participants upon arrival of their food for how to create their chosen setting. These involved the use (imagined) of iconic sounds, odors and/or physical props to enhance the eating experience. To increase ability to engage in and comply with these instructions, only respondents who had previously experienced ocean-side sunsets or traveled to a Mediterranean country for a holiday were eligible for conditions B and C, respectively. Once participants had read the instructions and mentally evoked the eating experience, emotion states were scored using Self-Assessment Manikins (SAM; Lang, 1980). One SAM scale ranged from a smiling, happy figure to a frowning, unhappy figure; this scale represents a valence dimension. Another SAM scale ranged from an excited, wide-eyed figure to a relaxed, sleepy figure; this represents an arousal dimension. Participants then rated how vividly they imagined the situation (1 ¼ “not at all” and 7 ¼ “extremely”), and answered questions on 7-pt Likert scales (1 ¼ “disagree extremely”; 7 ¼ “agree extremely”): “I enjoyed this meal experience,” “This was a memorable meal experience,” and “It was difficult to imagine myself having this eating experience”. The last item was used as a control variable since this task involved people not only imagining the setting they were in and actions, but also the meal itself. The different evoked eating experiences were compared using analysis of variance considering the experimental condition as the independent variable and the answers about the evoked experience as dependent variables. Where significant differences were established, Tukey’s test facilitated post-hoc comparison of means. After removing respondents who were not able to vividly imagine the scenario or who completed the surveys randomly (final N ¼ 307), chi-square tests found that the three consumer groups (A, B, and C) were similar with respect to gender, age, income, household size, and educational attainment (P-values between .14 and .97). The mean scores for vividness of the imagined eating experience did not significantly vary by experimental condition (P > .10) and ranged from 4.6–4.7 where 7 was “extremely.”
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Context
Fig. 26.1 Instructions provided to respondents in Case Study 1 regarding enhanced evening meal occasions. Condition B (panel A) and condition C (panel B).
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26.3.2.2 Results and discussion As expected, positive feelings were greater for the enhanced meal experiences (B and C) than for the control condition (A) (Table 26.2), and this can perhaps be explained by the novelty of the steps involved in modifying the consumption environment. However, “Summer in Italy” (C) was less differentiated from the unenhanced meal experience (A) than “Sunset by the beach” (B). The two environments were evoked by different means (e.g., placemat, napkin, candle to create tavern feel versus mist bottle to create pleasant ocean/seaside smell), which may have been a contributing factor to the observed differences. Confounded herewith was a difference in the social aspects of the evoked environments, which was more dominant in “Summer in Italy” than “Sunset by the beach”. People rarely eat alone in restaurants (Pliner & Bell, 2009), and this may have contributed to greater difficulty in imagining the condition C eating experience. Also, the contrast between the social atmosphere of an Italian tavern versus being alone at home may have contributed to less happy feelings. Conversely, watching a sunset is likely to be a positive and peaceful moment (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000), and therefore the positive impact of this evoked environment may be less diminished by being alone. Although only borderline significant (Table 26.2), the mean scores for the statement “eating together with other people instead of eating alone would improve this meal experience” were highest for “Summer in Italy” and could support the above explanation for differences between the two evoked environments. The enhanced meal experiences (B and C) did not differ from the control condition (A) on expected meal enjoyment (Table 26.2). This may be explained, in part, by the instruction to imagine that the food was well liked, and that consumers’ responses tapped into this hedonic aspect more strongly than the overall meal experience. With regard to the meal experience being memorable, the P-value was significant, with the lowest mean value being for the control condition (A) (Table 26.2). This suggests that encouraging people to make some effort during their weekday meals has potential for them to associate more positive feelings with a liked and nutritionally balanced meal. Also, since part of the instruction mentioned that the meal was appetizing and well liked, this finding is suggestive of the impact that tasty food in combination with a positive environment can have on memorability (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2015b, 2015c).
26.3.3 Case study 2: Using a scenario and different memories to evoke mindsets and explore the impact on meal enjoyment and satisfaction Considering that evening weekday meals are occasions where people feel quite uninspired and tend to cook less balanced meals (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2016b), the second case study continued the exploration of strategies to enhance and improve people’s evening dinner occasions. Particularly, we investigated the potential of evoking a positively enhanced environment or imagining a positive event (be it a past positive event or a future one), on enjoyment and satisfaction of healthy evening meals.
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Table 26.2 Mean scores (standard errors between brackets) for emotions and attitudes associated with three different evoked eating experiences in Case Study 1 (N ¼ 307). The control condition (A) and two enhanced evening meal occasions (B and C)
SAM negative/positive SAM calm/excited I enjoyed this meal experience This was a memorable meal experience It was difficult to imagine myself having this eating experience
A: Control N 5 105
B: “Sunset by the beach” N 5 96
C: “Summer in Italy” N 5 106
Test statistics
3.5a (0.2) 2.6 (0.1) 5.3 (0.1) 4.8a (0.1) 3.5 (0.2)
4.2b (0.2) 2.8 (0.2) 5.5 (0.1) 5.4b (0.1) 3.9 (0.2)
3.8ab (0.2) 2.6 (0.2) 5.4 (0.1) 5.4b (0.1) 3.5 (0.2)
F(2,304) ¼ 3.2; P ¼ .042 F(2,304) ¼ 1.1; P ¼ .35 F(2,304) ¼ 0.8; P ¼ .46 F(2,304) ¼ 7.8; P < .001 F(2,304) ¼2.2; P ¼ .11
Note: SAM scales were 9-point where for SAM valence 1 and 9 represent the negative and positive, respectively. For SAM arousal the anchors were relaxed (1) are excited (9). The other three items were measured on 7-pt Likert scales with end-point anchors: 1 ¼ “disagree extremely” and 7 ¼ “agree extremely”. Different letters after means indicate experimental conditions which were significantly different based on Tukey’s test at P ¼ .05 (family-wise).
Context
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26.3.3.1 Empirical procedures and data analysis The study was conducted with 640 UK residents who completed an online survey from a private location. Participants were allocated to one of four experimental conditions, and were balanced in terms of age (19–34, 35–49, or 50–70 years old) and gender across these conditions. At the start of the survey, participants were told that they would be asked to complete three different tasks. The first of these (Task 1) consisted of the evaluation of six different descriptions of meals. Participants were asked to imagine they were alone and about to have dinner; the meal was briefly described. Two of the meals were designed to be perceived as “healthy” since we were curious about the potential of evoked context/imagery strategies to improve meal experiences: (1) lean steak, brown rice, steamed vegetables, fresh fruit; and (2) grilled chicken, boiled potatoes, mixed green salad, light fruit yoghurt. Four other meals were less healthy to avoid participants guessing the aim of the study (e.g., grilled white fish, French fries, carrot salad, cheese cake). The presentations of these six short meal descriptions was randomized and for each, participants indicated the expected enjoyment by answering the question “How enjoyable would this eating occasion be?” on a 7-point scale from “not at all” (1) to “very” (7). The second task involved reading a short passage (around 250 words) about Roman architecture as an attempt to achieve a similar neutral mood across participants before the third task. To check that their mood state was neutral following Task 2, they completed a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM; Lang, 1980) question (described in Section 26.3.2.1). For task 3, participants were allocated to one of four experimental conditions (between-subjects design), and in three of these conditions they were asked to imagine as vividly as possible a particular experience/achievement and describe it briefly (max 50 words) as if they were telling a good friend/family member about it. Writing down the evoked situation is a helpful strategy to make participants engage in the evocation experience more vividly. One experimental condition was about imagining “a past experience that you remember fondly” (PM- past positive memory), another one was about “a future experience that you look forward to” (FUT- future positive experience), and the third one was about “a meaningful personal achievement (e.g., passing an exam, completing a challenge)” (GA-goal achievement). Those in the fourth condition proceeded directly to Task 3 without this step. Regardless of which of the four experimental conditions participants were assigned to, they were next instructed to imagine that they were having dinner alone, eating the meal described to them. This time only the two (target) “healthier” meal descriptions were presented, in counterbalanced order. Participants allocated in the fourth experimental group (SETTING) were given the instruction “Before sitting down to eat you create a good atmosphere (e.g., setting the table nicely and putting on music)”. In the other three experimental groups, people were simply shown the meal descriptions and asked to answer the questions. Additional to the enjoyment question, for each meal they also indicated their level of satisfaction, and their agreement with the item “It was a healthy meal” on a 7-point Likert scale (1 ¼ “disagree extremely”; 7 ¼ “agree
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Context
extremely”). Since we were aware that this exercise required a strong cognitive effort (multiple aspects of context evocation and mental imagery), the item “My day-to-day tasks were not top-of-mind during this eating occasion” was also measured on the same scale. Finally, respondents indicated whether during the meal session they also imagined that they had prepared the food themselves since this could give an indication about food engagement. Questions about respondents’ demographic information formed the last section of the survey, together with a space for them to add any thoughts they had about the tasks. The data of 416 participants were retained for analysis (data cleaning involved removing those participants who did not imagine the scenario vividly (1 or 2 in a 9-point scale) and those who reported very negative feelings in the SAM scale (8 or 9 on the 9-point valence scale, since perhaps they misunderstood the scale or responded randomly). One-way analysis of variance (ANOVAs) was conducted on the data (Task 3) considering as explanatory variables the experimental condition, whether they are dieting, and whether they imagined they prepared the food (yes/ no). The latter variables were included as controls and were similarly distributed among the four experimental conditions. The responses were pooled across the two healthy meal descriptions.
26.3.3.2 Results and discussion The ratings of enjoyment and satisfaction of the healthy evening meals (Task 3) resulted in significant differences among the four experimental conditions. Regarding enjoyment, the experimental condition had an effect, F(3, 403) ¼ 3.92, P ¼ .009, as well as its interaction with the preparation (or not) of the food F(3, 403) ¼ 5.21, P ¼ 0.002. The condition where the physical environment was positively enhanced (SETTING) and the condition where participants recalled a positive past memory (PM) received the highest ratings, whereas the condition related to the future positive event (FUT) received significantly lower mean enjoyment scores. Regarding the interaction between experimental condition and food preparation (or not), the people who were asked to evoke a positive physical setting (SETTING), regardless of the meal preparation, scored the highest ratings followed by the respondents in the goal achievement group (GA) who imagined that they had prepared the meal (Fig. 26.2). Those in the GA group who imagined that someone else prepared the meal scored the lowest in enjoyment. No other factors were significant for enjoyment. Regarding satisfaction ratings, the experimental condition was significant F(3, 403) ¼ 2.84, P ¼ .038, but the post-hoc comparisons revealed no differences among the four experimental conditions. The interaction with the preparation of the food, which was also significant, F(3, 403) ¼ 4.73, P ¼ .003, yielded similar results to those of the enjoyment. The ratings of healthiness differed significantly among the experimental conditions, and the goal achievement (GA) group rated the healthiness of the meals as being significantly lower compared to the SETTING group (M ¼ 5.1 vs. M ¼ 5.5, P ¼ .032). Whether or not participants imagined that they had prepared the meals themselves also mattered. Regarding the interaction between experimental and food preparation, the
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6.5 Prepared food?-No 6
B
B
B
5.5 Enjoyment rating (1–7)
Prepared food?-Yes B
B AB AB
5
A
4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2
Setting
FUT
GA
PM
Experimental condition
Fig. 26.2 Results for Task 3 of Case Study 2 showing expected enjoyment (1 ¼ “not at all”, 7 ¼ “extremely”) of eating a healthy dinner meal alone, as a result of the effect between experimental conditions evoking a positive mood and whether the respondents imagined that it was them preparing the food, or not. Error bars represent 95% confidence interval. In SETTING they imagined having the meals in an enhanced environment, in FUT they had to imagine a future positive event, in GA a goal achievement, and in PM a past positive moment.
SETTING group, regardless of the meal preparation, scored the highest ratings in healthiness, followed by the respondents in the goal achievement groups who imagined that they had prepared the meal. Those in the GA group who imagined that someone else prepared the meal scored the lowest in healthiness. No other factors were significant for healthiness. Finally, in all four experimental conditions, respondents were similar in the degree to which they thought (or not) about their daily tasks (P > .05), scoring around 4.6, on average, on a 7-point Likert scale on the item “My day-to-day tasks were not top-ofmind during this eating occasion” (1 ¼ “disagree extremely”, 7 ¼ “agree extremely”). This suggests that mental strategies such as those considered in this case study could help people be more “engaged in the moment” during evening meal occasions (incl. food preparation). Collectively, these results indicated that the evoked context where participants imagined setting up a nice eating physical environment had the most positive impact. In addition, the factor related to food involvement, namely whether they imagined that they prepared the described meals or not, also played an important role. This could be related to the IKEA effect, where doing something for yourself leads to a more
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rewarding experience. In this study we did not explicitly ask the participants to imagine that they prepared the meal, but researchers could use this insight in future scenarios on participants who do prepare meals with some frequency. This finding shows that other factors should be considered when investigating the resulting satisfaction of consuming healthy meals.
26.4
General discussion
Our previous work (Table 26.1), as well as the two case studies in Section 26.3, used verbal and/or pictorial evocation of some contextual information (location, company, format of consumption, and combinations thereof ), or scenarios, where a certain situation and actions are described. The respondents were asked to vividly imagine this and indicate their emotional reactions, or level of satisfaction with the product(s)/meals presented. From our point of view, providing a context when people are asked in a non-real-world setting to evaluate their emotions towards foods is essential due to the very nature of emotion responses. However, the approaches described have their strengths and limitations. From the early research on context evocation on hedonic ratings of food products, this empirical extension to emotion research does provide more reliable and stable results (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2014b) compared to laboratory settings where no context information is given. Respondents are good at imagining themselves in that occasion with more or less vividness and the responses seem more ecologically valid as seen in the range of studies overviewed here. That said, we have not compared the results with a test conducted in the real occasion as described in the written evoked context. Clearly, real-world circumstances are extremely complex and not even stable for the same person from one day to the other. This fact makes it virtually impossible to predict with accuracy how a person will emotionally respond to a product or meal. However, we can assume that when we ask people to imagine themselves in a situation such as a weekend breakfast, people will tend to imagine a representative occasion. We can only speculate that the emotional state of the person will be stable in that representative occasion. That brings us to our next point. If we provide more details or actions or even put participants in a simulated environment (including virtual reality; VR) to avoid the imagination part of the task, does it really have more validity? One could argue that a person might not feel “comfortable” because the simulated environment might not be an environment they would usually be in (e.g., Meiselman, 1996; Weber, King, & Meiselman, 2004). In that sense, is it not more convenient to rely on people’s own imagination bringing them to a place or situation that to them is “real”, despite the variability among individuals? We believe it all depends on the research question, but for emotion research, people would have to be in their most personalized circumstances/environments. So far, it is difficult to say that other approaches, such as simulated environments or VR (where people visualize nothing else but an environment), work better for product-based emotion research. In particular the latter is still in its infancy and seems poised to advance (e.g., Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017). However, it remains a fundamental concern that VR could distract/hinder people from completing
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their own picture—personalizing it with people they know, for instance. Additionally, at the moment VR with food research is difficult due to the fact that the food cannot easily be consumed while wearing VR equipment. In an MSc thesis (Van Hooft & Piqueras-Fiszman, 2017) where participants had to taste cherry tomatoes while watching through a VR headset a video simulating a commute on a train, the use of VR led to less positive hedonic responses compared to a traditional CLT or 2D visualization. That said, with other products which do not involve tasting or ingestion, such as sunscreen (Andersen, Kraus, Ritz, & Bredie, 2019), or in food-choice paradigms (e.g., Siegrist et al., 2019), VR seems to be a promising tool. The reliance on consumers’ ability to deeply evoke and imagine specific situations, even if familiar to them, is a cause for concern with scenarios. Legitimately, one could ask whether the data generated by consumers are good indicators of the responses that would be observed with actual consumption behavior/in actual situations. They would be expected to vary depending on the response/behavior being studied, and tentatively this is a lesser concern for sensory perceptions than emotional associations. In Case Study 2, described in Section 26.3.3, respondents had to imagine themselves having an evening meal and at the same time imagine a positive event or goal, or eating in a nice home environment. Perhaps this amount of imagery led to hypothetical evaluations different from the evaluations that respondents would have given had they actually had the meals in front of them to taste. Tentatively, caution should be taken to avoid making people imagine too many events, situations, or food consumption. The extensive need to cleanse data to drop participants that indicated they did not vividly evoke the situation or did not experience positive emotions as predicted could support this suggestion. Whether the data collection using online surveys was a factor herein is not known, but it is a possibility that should be investigated. Additional research is required to establish the pros/cons of different means of evoking contexts in product research. This will enable more informed decisions of when they are suitable and when they are an unsatisfactory and convenience-based proxy for research in natural environments. Arguing in favor of the latter, Pham (2013) states that “participants who are asked to project themselves into certain consumption situations are likely to adopt overly analytical mindsets that are not representative of how consumers actually respond to such situations in real life (see, e.g., Dunn & Ashton-James, 2008; Snell, Gibbs, & Varey, 1995, for relevant findings)” (p. 420). He further argues that “scenarios are poorly suited to the study of “hot” variables such as emotional responses and motivational states, whose influence is difficult to imagine without a genuine experience (Pham, 2004)” (p. 420). We regard these as legitimate concerns and advocate that comparisons of emotional associations from evoked context and real situations be performed. Possibly contexts that are appropriate and familiar to consumers, coupled with the experience of actual product consumption is less likely to suffer from these biases. While acknowledging that “real consumption situations are rich with dynamic visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory stimuli which serve as a vivid source of contextual information” (Bangcuyo et al., 2015), and that evoked context will never be able to replicate this, we believe that eliciting emotional associations to products under evoked context is better than not evoking context when data are elicited in laboratory settings.
560
26.5
Context
Conclusion
Context is important when undertaking food-related emotion research and without knowledge of when, where, what, what and by/ with whom foods/beverages are consumed it is difficult to obtain complete and accurate consumer insights. Natural environments represent the “gold standard” ( Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017), but they are often more demanding for consumer researchers than laboratory settings. The use of scenarios to evoke consumption context in laboratory settings can be used to overcome this limitation. Typically they describe a situation that the consumer can imagine (picnic lunch or eating dinner at home while watching TV) and are used as a frame of reference while eliciting emotional associations to products. The present chapter has reviewed past research using scenarios to evoke context in emotion research within the field of Sensory and Consumer Science and also presented two case studies to illustrate extended applications of scenarios. Collectively, the two case studies demonstrated that consumers are capable of using lengthy scenarios to evoke complex situations, which do not only describe a specific consumption situation but behaviors associated with engaging in/positively enhancing a meal occasion. This broadens the possible application of scenarios in sensory and consumer research and enables investigation of imagined behavioral interventions as associated, for example, with creating positive change for personal health and wellbeing. However, care likely needs to be taken to ensure that the required mental imagery and cognitive mental burden does not become so significant that consumers struggle to vividly evoke the focal scenario. With the continued development of VR, it may be that these limitations can be overcome, but other limitations arise that require consideration and further development in VR methodology itself. Most importantly, however, is the caution that evoked context cannot replace real settings and will only ever be able to act as a proxy. How well they perform this role is not certain, but we believe that providing some contextual information is better than providing none.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank the financial support from two organizations: The New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation & Employment, and the New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Ltd. Also, YiXun Xia is thanked for the support in preparing the manuscript.
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26
Betina Piqueras-Fiszman*, Sara R. Jaeger† *Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands, †The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand
26.1
Introduction
Looking back several decades, there has been an evolution of focus in Sensory and Consumer Research, from more analytical measurements, such as sensory data, to hedonic/consumer data, such as liking and purchase intention, and, more recently, emotions and wellbeing (e.g., Jaeger, 2006; Jaeger et al., 2017; King et al., 2015; Tuorila, 2007). In parallel, there has been an evolution from controlled settings, such as laboratory conditions to more natural or real-world contexts, and in general, a greater appreciation of the role of situational influences of food-related consumer behavior ( Jaeger et al., 2017; K€ oster, 2009; Meiselman, 1992; Schutz, 1988). When measuring hedonic aspects of food consumption in the latter conditions, the findings suggest that we like (or enjoy) foods more when we consume them in conditions that we consider as favorable and appropriate (e.g., Delarue & Boutrolle, 2010; Edwards, Meiselman, Edwards, & Lesher, 2003; Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017; Posri & Macfie, 2008). The most common underlying assumption is shared across the existing literature: the closer one feels to a situation that is appropriate and familiar (or realistic for the subject), the better the hedonic evaluation is. However, results are mixed, since not all studies that have simulated an appropriate environment have showed that this enhanced environment led to higher hedonic responses compared to a Central Location Test (CLT) (e.g., Petit & Sieffermann, 2007). Along the same line of thought, one would also expect the same pattern or results to be observed with emotion-related responses, and with broader measures such as satisfaction or enjoyment. These latter measures depend, to a larger extent, on the context, whereas hedonic questions focus mainly on the characteristics of the food product (i.e., “how much do you like this product?”). With regards to collecting emotion responses evoked during food consumption, the need for contextual aspects becomes even more apparent. “Emotions are context specific” (Richins, 1997). Consumer researchers aim to observe the effect of a (food/beverage) product on people’s emotional state, but in order to see that effect, information about the baseline emotional state is needed. As one can imagine, this emotional state is dependent on, for instance, the weather, the company, the location, Context. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-814495-4.00026-X Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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and/or the time of the day. If contextual information is not given, data interpretation might be ambiguous ( Jaeger, Cardello, & Schutz, 2013), or simply, very different from what they would experience in a natural setting. It is for this reason that in the case of emotion research in a laboratory setting, contextual information becomes more relevant. Needless to say, this contextual information will never equate the complexity of real-world contexts, nor do we assume that the emotional responses obtained will be the same. Nevertheless, we can say that mentally simulating a situation does provide some baseline in consumer research and contributes to putting people in a specific mindset. In fact, the scenario paradigm is an established approach in consumer research (e.g., Bolton & Alba, 2012). This chapter focuses on the influence of contextual aspects, evoked in laboratory or online studies, on consumer’s evaluations of emotion or satisfaction towards food products (see Edwards, Hartwell, & Giboreau, 2016, for a review on emotion research in context). We provide a brief overview on the literature about contextual influences on emotion-related responses in laboratory studies. Extending this line of research, we will then present two previously unpublished studies that use scenarios to evoke complex consumption situations. In one study, the focus is on exploring whether creating atmosphere at home enhances an evening meal experience, and in the other study the focus is one investigating if imagery of either positive events or goals, or an enhanced setting, can influence people’s enjoyment of a healthy evening meal.
26.2
The role of consumption context in emotion research in sensory and consumer science
26.2.1 Integrating context and emotion research Extant research approaches for assessing satisfaction and enjoyment with food tend to heavily rely on the use of attitudinal measures, the most common ones being hedonic ratings (judgements of liking/disliking or preference in response to either a food name or a food that is tasted), and behavioral intent ratings (judgements of the probability of purchase or frequency of consumption). However, evaluative judgements made prior to, and during, meals extend beyond liking and preference for food/beverage items. About a decade ago, researchers in the field started considering emotions as responses to food and beverages in laboratory settings (e.g., Spinelli, Masi, Dinnella, Zoboli, & Monteleone, 2013). Two of the pioneers of this new approach were King and Meiselman (2010), who developed a list of emotion words, to be used together with sensory and liking data as part of online, CLT, or laboratory studies on food and beverages. However, as mentioned in the Introduction, the consumption context gives rise to an array of emotions and feelings (positive, negative, or neutral) that influence food choices and modulate the enjoyment of the consumption experience/eating occasion (Desmet & Schifferstein, 2008; Giboreau & Meiselman, 2018; Hartwell, Edwards, & Brown, 2013; Richins, 1997). Therefore, we saw the need of merging the two streams
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of research with the purpose of extending context research beyond hedonics and enhancing emotion research to take account of context, hereby increasing ecological validity and added value. In previous research (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2014a, 2014b) we explored how evoked consumption contexts influence emotional responses (using a checklist emotion questionnaire) towards foods. Before going into details, it is worth describing what exactly we evoked in the different studies; Table 26.1 provides a summary. Throughout our own studies, we varied either one or two contextual dimensions (e.g., time of the day, location) or multiple, depending on the research question. The purpose of the first studies was mainly to provide evidence of the impact, and hence importance, of simply providing respondents with a context in which to imagine themselves consuming that product and to ignore the real circumstances of consumption (i.e., lab setting). In a series of studies, we presented food products and written consumption contexts varying in appropriateness, and showed that the emotion associations can greatly differ when the products are imagined to be consumed three different times (e.g., breakfast, lunch, or dinner). We also found evidence that the use of positive emotion terms was more frequent in those consumption contexts that were considered more appropriate, whereas negative emotion terms were more frequently selected when the context was perceived as less appropriate for the product. We approached this across respondents and by using segmentation, since a moment of the day could be very appropriate for some but not for others (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2015a; see also Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2016a). However, since the topic of appropriateness will be covered in another chapter in this book, we will not go further into details.
26.2.2 Contextual dimensions: More or less? At this stage, one might be thinking that even if we only altered in written form one contextual dimension, in the minds of the respondents many other dimensions might have also changed. For instance, the context “a weekend breakfast” for some could mean a relaxed moment alone at home, and for others, a bustling moment with others in a cafe. Where the breakfast is, the time when it is taking place, who is present, what is eaten, etc. All of these factors exert an influence. That is certainly something we considered when providing these short pieces of contextual information in our studies. Researchers have to do a trade-off according to their research questions. Nevertheless, for the purpose of our research it was enough to demonstrate the impact: that emotional associations to products differed from one consumption context to the other, and also to results without context evocation. In other words, the emotions were not only associated to the product but rather to the consumption of the product, in context. Furthermore, in subsequent similar studies in which these simple uni-dimensional contexts were evoked either with text only or with additional pictorial representations, we found that the appropriateness ratings differed (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2014c). When less detail was provided in the evoked consumption contexts, participants seemed to base
548
Context
Table 26.1 Summary of types of situational factors used to evoke context information in emotion-based studies Paper
Study
2014a
Contextual dimension
Other details
Weekend breakfast Afternoon snack After a special dinner
2014b
Study 1
Study 3
Weekend breakfast Afternoon snack After a special dinner Weekday breakfast Packed lunch outdoors Home dinner with friends Special dinner Afternoon snack
Study 1
Special dinner Afternoon snack
Study 2
2014c
WEEK 1: only under three contexts, without stimuli Product-context appropriateness measures WEEK 2: warm-up, no context with stimuli, three contexts with stimuli, DEBQ-e Product-context appropriateness measures
Product-context appropriateness measures
Product-context appropriateness measures
One participant only answered EQ with only one context per product Repeat the exact same task 1 h later
Two treatments: Tasted food + contexts in written format Food image + contexts in written format Product-context appropriateness measures
l
l
Study 2
Weekday breakfast
Three treatments: Fruit only image + contexts in written format Fruit with tableware image + contexts in written format Fruit only image + contexts in written & pictorial Product-context appropriateness measures
l
Packed lunch outdoors Dinner at home with friends
l
l
Evoked consumption context matters in food-related consumer affective research
549
their appropriateness ratings and emotion associations on previous experiences of those types of eating occasions, or similar ones. So it could be argued that with less information, or simply changing the key contextual element under focus, respondents are able to rely on their own experience, and are not forced into details which they would find difficult to imagine, and which would therefore affect their emotional response (see Section 26.4 for an extended discussion on this topic). Regarding multi-dimensional contexts (provided explicitly), we conducted several other studies (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2015a) purposefully designed to include different products, different contextual dimensions and presentation formats, different consumer populations, different test locations, and different emotion survey formats. Contexts (or eating occasions as we refer to them) were conceptualized in accordance with the multi-attribute product perspective and hence seen as entities constructed through the combination of different factors/dimensions at different levels (Macht, Meininger, & Roth, 2005). Following this perspective, Macht et al. (2005) suggested that affective responses to food can best be understood as responses to configurations of stimuli of which the food/beverage itself is only a single component. Jaeger, Bava, Worch, Dawson, and Marshall (2011) previously tapped into this notion to develop the “food choice kaleidoscope”, a conceptual framework that promotes the systematic examination of product, person, and context factors in food choice research (see also Gutjar, de Graaf, Palascha, & Jager, 2014). We used several contextual dimensions (from Bisogni et al., 2007) to develop eating occasions ranging from appropriate to inappropriate for each of the two focal product categories: ice-cream, indulgent and emotion-laden (Parker, Parker, & Brotchie, 2006) and an orange, a healthy food with functional benefits (Girard & Mazza, 1998). With the two product categories, we were able to deduce the relative importance that consumers give to the different contextual dimensions when evaluating the appropriateness of the overall eating occasions, and therefore the emotion data, but importantly, the interactions between the contextual dimensions provided (e.g., company with location of consumption). With such an approach, one can identify which contextual aspects consumers would care about when consuming (or choosing to consume) a product and which they would not. That said, readers should remember the trade-off mentioned in the above paragraph and bear in mind that the combinations of contextual dimensions should be realistic and appropriate for the target population. For instance, eating a sandwich for lunch alone in a metro could be realistic for students or business people in the city, but not for people working from home or retired people. Taken together, providing contextual information, be it partial or multidimensional, does provide a frame for consumers who are asked to fill in product emotion questionnaires either in laboratory/CLT settings, or online. If a product is developed to be a “breakfast product”, asking them to vividly imagine they are having breakfast, no matter with whom, or where, will help them to get in a breakfast mindset. According to our findings, the results seem to have more face validity compared to not providing that contextual information.
550
26.3
Context
Using sensory imagery to evoke a context and exploring its impact in potential satisfaction, attitudes, and meal choices
26.3.1 Scenarios for context evocation “Imagine that it is a Sunday morning where you are at home preparing breakfast for your family.” This is one example of a written scenario that may be used in consumer research to evoke a specific setting/situation. Another example is: “Imagine that you are in a shop buying a bottle of wine to bring to a shared dinner with good friends.” Scenarios can be even shorter (“Imagine you are eating lunch”), but also longer and/or describe not only a generalized situation but a sequence of events. For example, Jaeger and Meiselman (2004) used written scenarios that encompassed multiple steps in the meal provisioning process to study convenience perceptions. The following was used to convey a Chinese take-out meal: “You order a Chinese meal over the phone and drive the short distance to the restaurant and pick up the food. Fifteen minutes later you return home, transfer the food to a dinner plate and eat the meal. Afterwards, you place dishes in the dishwasher and dispose of any leftovers.” Scenarios can also be less defined and more open to individual interpretation/experiences such as “the usual situation in which you eat this product.” Scenarios originated outside the field of Sensory and Consumer Research and have been used for investigation of a broad range of issues (e.g., the relationship of satisfaction to expectation, product performance, and disconfirmation (Surprenant & Churchill Jr, 1984), service evaluation (Bitner, 1990), customers’ satisfaction with employee effort and competence (Andrzejewski & Mooney, 2016; Mohr & Bitner, 1995), and engagement in creative discussions (Rhisiart, 2013)). In product testing, scenarios can focus on a specific setting or more generally reduce random noise in the experimental setting (Cook & Campbell, 1979). Versatility and ease of implementation are additional benefits that have contributed to scenarios having become € om, Gilbert, K€oster, Mojet, and Wendin accepted as an experimental protocol. Astr€ (2011), Hein, Hamid, Jaeger, and Delahunty (2010, 2012), Hersleth, Monteleone, Segtnan, and Næs (2015) and Lusk, Hamid, Delahunty, and Jaeger (2015) are some papers that illustrate the use of scenarios with different products/settings and contribute to the discourse of these benefits independently of the product used.
26.3.2 Case study 1: Exploring the use of scenarios to evoke enhanced at-home consumption environments This case study, presenting previously unpublished data, illustrates the use of lengthy scenarios to evoke eating experiences. The scenarios used in this research were also more complex than is typical since they also required participants to imagine actions they would take to create a certain eating environment/ experience. Our main aim was to explore whether enhancing their environment at home would be associated with increased positive emotions and enjoyment of evening meals.
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26.3.2.1 Empirical procedures and data analysis Four-hundred-fifty UK adults took part in an online survey and were randomly allocated to one of three experimental conditions that asked them to imagine a dinner meal situation. The control condition (A) was: “It is a weekday. You are alone and are online ordering an evening meal to be delivered to your place of living. The food you choose is nutritionally balanced and something you like. After 20 minutes the food arrives. It looks appetizing and smells good.” In a second condition (B), after the third sentence, the following instruction was added: “When placing the order several add-on options appear. They are not related to the available menu items but have names like ‘A night in the park’, ‘Summer in Italy’, ‘The splendor of Rome’, ‘Sunset by the beach’ and ‘The Scottish Highlands.’ One of these options add only 5% to the total cost of the order and being in the mood to try something new you select ‘Sunset by the beach.’ The rest of the instructions from the delivery company encouraged the customers to recreate their own ‘Sunset by the beach’ atmosphere at home. The third condition (C) was similar to the second one, except that respondents had to imagine that they selected the ‘Summer in Italy’ add-on. Fig. 26.1 details the additional instructions to participants upon arrival of their food for how to create their chosen setting. These involved the use (imagined) of iconic sounds, odors and/or physical props to enhance the eating experience. To increase ability to engage in and comply with these instructions, only respondents who had previously experienced ocean-side sunsets or traveled to a Mediterranean country for a holiday were eligible for conditions B and C, respectively. Once participants had read the instructions and mentally evoked the eating experience, emotion states were scored using Self-Assessment Manikins (SAM; Lang, 1980). One SAM scale ranged from a smiling, happy figure to a frowning, unhappy figure; this scale represents a valence dimension. Another SAM scale ranged from an excited, wide-eyed figure to a relaxed, sleepy figure; this represents an arousal dimension. Participants then rated how vividly they imagined the situation (1 ¼ “not at all” and 7 ¼ “extremely”), and answered questions on 7-pt Likert scales (1 ¼ “disagree extremely”; 7 ¼ “agree extremely”): “I enjoyed this meal experience,” “This was a memorable meal experience,” and “It was difficult to imagine myself having this eating experience”. The last item was used as a control variable since this task involved people not only imagining the setting they were in and actions, but also the meal itself. The different evoked eating experiences were compared using analysis of variance considering the experimental condition as the independent variable and the answers about the evoked experience as dependent variables. Where significant differences were established, Tukey’s test facilitated post-hoc comparison of means. After removing respondents who were not able to vividly imagine the scenario or who completed the surveys randomly (final N ¼ 307), chi-square tests found that the three consumer groups (A, B, and C) were similar with respect to gender, age, income, household size, and educational attainment (P-values between .14 and .97). The mean scores for vividness of the imagined eating experience did not significantly vary by experimental condition (P > .10) and ranged from 4.6–4.7 where 7 was “extremely.”
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Fig. 26.1 Instructions provided to respondents in Case Study 1 regarding enhanced evening meal occasions. Condition B (panel A) and condition C (panel B).
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26.3.2.2 Results and discussion As expected, positive feelings were greater for the enhanced meal experiences (B and C) than for the control condition (A) (Table 26.2), and this can perhaps be explained by the novelty of the steps involved in modifying the consumption environment. However, “Summer in Italy” (C) was less differentiated from the unenhanced meal experience (A) than “Sunset by the beach” (B). The two environments were evoked by different means (e.g., placemat, napkin, candle to create tavern feel versus mist bottle to create pleasant ocean/seaside smell), which may have been a contributing factor to the observed differences. Confounded herewith was a difference in the social aspects of the evoked environments, which was more dominant in “Summer in Italy” than “Sunset by the beach”. People rarely eat alone in restaurants (Pliner & Bell, 2009), and this may have contributed to greater difficulty in imagining the condition C eating experience. Also, the contrast between the social atmosphere of an Italian tavern versus being alone at home may have contributed to less happy feelings. Conversely, watching a sunset is likely to be a positive and peaceful moment (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000), and therefore the positive impact of this evoked environment may be less diminished by being alone. Although only borderline significant (Table 26.2), the mean scores for the statement “eating together with other people instead of eating alone would improve this meal experience” were highest for “Summer in Italy” and could support the above explanation for differences between the two evoked environments. The enhanced meal experiences (B and C) did not differ from the control condition (A) on expected meal enjoyment (Table 26.2). This may be explained, in part, by the instruction to imagine that the food was well liked, and that consumers’ responses tapped into this hedonic aspect more strongly than the overall meal experience. With regard to the meal experience being memorable, the P-value was significant, with the lowest mean value being for the control condition (A) (Table 26.2). This suggests that encouraging people to make some effort during their weekday meals has potential for them to associate more positive feelings with a liked and nutritionally balanced meal. Also, since part of the instruction mentioned that the meal was appetizing and well liked, this finding is suggestive of the impact that tasty food in combination with a positive environment can have on memorability (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2015b, 2015c).
26.3.3 Case study 2: Using a scenario and different memories to evoke mindsets and explore the impact on meal enjoyment and satisfaction Considering that evening weekday meals are occasions where people feel quite uninspired and tend to cook less balanced meals (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2016b), the second case study continued the exploration of strategies to enhance and improve people’s evening dinner occasions. Particularly, we investigated the potential of evoking a positively enhanced environment or imagining a positive event (be it a past positive event or a future one), on enjoyment and satisfaction of healthy evening meals.
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Table 26.2 Mean scores (standard errors between brackets) for emotions and attitudes associated with three different evoked eating experiences in Case Study 1 (N ¼ 307). The control condition (A) and two enhanced evening meal occasions (B and C)
SAM negative/positive SAM calm/excited I enjoyed this meal experience This was a memorable meal experience It was difficult to imagine myself having this eating experience
A: Control N 5 105
B: “Sunset by the beach” N 5 96
C: “Summer in Italy” N 5 106
Test statistics
3.5a (0.2) 2.6 (0.1) 5.3 (0.1) 4.8a (0.1) 3.5 (0.2)
4.2b (0.2) 2.8 (0.2) 5.5 (0.1) 5.4b (0.1) 3.9 (0.2)
3.8ab (0.2) 2.6 (0.2) 5.4 (0.1) 5.4b (0.1) 3.5 (0.2)
F(2,304) ¼ 3.2; P ¼ .042 F(2,304) ¼ 1.1; P ¼ .35 F(2,304) ¼ 0.8; P ¼ .46 F(2,304) ¼ 7.8; P < .001 F(2,304) ¼2.2; P ¼ .11
Note: SAM scales were 9-point where for SAM valence 1 and 9 represent the negative and positive, respectively. For SAM arousal the anchors were relaxed (1) are excited (9). The other three items were measured on 7-pt Likert scales with end-point anchors: 1 ¼ “disagree extremely” and 7 ¼ “agree extremely”. Different letters after means indicate experimental conditions which were significantly different based on Tukey’s test at P ¼ .05 (family-wise).
Context
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26.3.3.1 Empirical procedures and data analysis The study was conducted with 640 UK residents who completed an online survey from a private location. Participants were allocated to one of four experimental conditions, and were balanced in terms of age (19–34, 35–49, or 50–70 years old) and gender across these conditions. At the start of the survey, participants were told that they would be asked to complete three different tasks. The first of these (Task 1) consisted of the evaluation of six different descriptions of meals. Participants were asked to imagine they were alone and about to have dinner; the meal was briefly described. Two of the meals were designed to be perceived as “healthy” since we were curious about the potential of evoked context/imagery strategies to improve meal experiences: (1) lean steak, brown rice, steamed vegetables, fresh fruit; and (2) grilled chicken, boiled potatoes, mixed green salad, light fruit yoghurt. Four other meals were less healthy to avoid participants guessing the aim of the study (e.g., grilled white fish, French fries, carrot salad, cheese cake). The presentations of these six short meal descriptions was randomized and for each, participants indicated the expected enjoyment by answering the question “How enjoyable would this eating occasion be?” on a 7-point scale from “not at all” (1) to “very” (7). The second task involved reading a short passage (around 250 words) about Roman architecture as an attempt to achieve a similar neutral mood across participants before the third task. To check that their mood state was neutral following Task 2, they completed a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM; Lang, 1980) question (described in Section 26.3.2.1). For task 3, participants were allocated to one of four experimental conditions (between-subjects design), and in three of these conditions they were asked to imagine as vividly as possible a particular experience/achievement and describe it briefly (max 50 words) as if they were telling a good friend/family member about it. Writing down the evoked situation is a helpful strategy to make participants engage in the evocation experience more vividly. One experimental condition was about imagining “a past experience that you remember fondly” (PM- past positive memory), another one was about “a future experience that you look forward to” (FUT- future positive experience), and the third one was about “a meaningful personal achievement (e.g., passing an exam, completing a challenge)” (GA-goal achievement). Those in the fourth condition proceeded directly to Task 3 without this step. Regardless of which of the four experimental conditions participants were assigned to, they were next instructed to imagine that they were having dinner alone, eating the meal described to them. This time only the two (target) “healthier” meal descriptions were presented, in counterbalanced order. Participants allocated in the fourth experimental group (SETTING) were given the instruction “Before sitting down to eat you create a good atmosphere (e.g., setting the table nicely and putting on music)”. In the other three experimental groups, people were simply shown the meal descriptions and asked to answer the questions. Additional to the enjoyment question, for each meal they also indicated their level of satisfaction, and their agreement with the item “It was a healthy meal” on a 7-point Likert scale (1 ¼ “disagree extremely”; 7 ¼ “agree
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extremely”). Since we were aware that this exercise required a strong cognitive effort (multiple aspects of context evocation and mental imagery), the item “My day-to-day tasks were not top-of-mind during this eating occasion” was also measured on the same scale. Finally, respondents indicated whether during the meal session they also imagined that they had prepared the food themselves since this could give an indication about food engagement. Questions about respondents’ demographic information formed the last section of the survey, together with a space for them to add any thoughts they had about the tasks. The data of 416 participants were retained for analysis (data cleaning involved removing those participants who did not imagine the scenario vividly (1 or 2 in a 9-point scale) and those who reported very negative feelings in the SAM scale (8 or 9 on the 9-point valence scale, since perhaps they misunderstood the scale or responded randomly). One-way analysis of variance (ANOVAs) was conducted on the data (Task 3) considering as explanatory variables the experimental condition, whether they are dieting, and whether they imagined they prepared the food (yes/ no). The latter variables were included as controls and were similarly distributed among the four experimental conditions. The responses were pooled across the two healthy meal descriptions.
26.3.3.2 Results and discussion The ratings of enjoyment and satisfaction of the healthy evening meals (Task 3) resulted in significant differences among the four experimental conditions. Regarding enjoyment, the experimental condition had an effect, F(3, 403) ¼ 3.92, P ¼ .009, as well as its interaction with the preparation (or not) of the food F(3, 403) ¼ 5.21, P ¼ 0.002. The condition where the physical environment was positively enhanced (SETTING) and the condition where participants recalled a positive past memory (PM) received the highest ratings, whereas the condition related to the future positive event (FUT) received significantly lower mean enjoyment scores. Regarding the interaction between experimental condition and food preparation (or not), the people who were asked to evoke a positive physical setting (SETTING), regardless of the meal preparation, scored the highest ratings followed by the respondents in the goal achievement group (GA) who imagined that they had prepared the meal (Fig. 26.2). Those in the GA group who imagined that someone else prepared the meal scored the lowest in enjoyment. No other factors were significant for enjoyment. Regarding satisfaction ratings, the experimental condition was significant F(3, 403) ¼ 2.84, P ¼ .038, but the post-hoc comparisons revealed no differences among the four experimental conditions. The interaction with the preparation of the food, which was also significant, F(3, 403) ¼ 4.73, P ¼ .003, yielded similar results to those of the enjoyment. The ratings of healthiness differed significantly among the experimental conditions, and the goal achievement (GA) group rated the healthiness of the meals as being significantly lower compared to the SETTING group (M ¼ 5.1 vs. M ¼ 5.5, P ¼ .032). Whether or not participants imagined that they had prepared the meals themselves also mattered. Regarding the interaction between experimental and food preparation, the
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6.5 Prepared food?-No 6
B
B
B
5.5 Enjoyment rating (1–7)
Prepared food?-Yes B
B AB AB
5
A
4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2
Setting
FUT
GA
PM
Experimental condition
Fig. 26.2 Results for Task 3 of Case Study 2 showing expected enjoyment (1 ¼ “not at all”, 7 ¼ “extremely”) of eating a healthy dinner meal alone, as a result of the effect between experimental conditions evoking a positive mood and whether the respondents imagined that it was them preparing the food, or not. Error bars represent 95% confidence interval. In SETTING they imagined having the meals in an enhanced environment, in FUT they had to imagine a future positive event, in GA a goal achievement, and in PM a past positive moment.
SETTING group, regardless of the meal preparation, scored the highest ratings in healthiness, followed by the respondents in the goal achievement groups who imagined that they had prepared the meal. Those in the GA group who imagined that someone else prepared the meal scored the lowest in healthiness. No other factors were significant for healthiness. Finally, in all four experimental conditions, respondents were similar in the degree to which they thought (or not) about their daily tasks (P > .05), scoring around 4.6, on average, on a 7-point Likert scale on the item “My day-to-day tasks were not top-ofmind during this eating occasion” (1 ¼ “disagree extremely”, 7 ¼ “agree extremely”). This suggests that mental strategies such as those considered in this case study could help people be more “engaged in the moment” during evening meal occasions (incl. food preparation). Collectively, these results indicated that the evoked context where participants imagined setting up a nice eating physical environment had the most positive impact. In addition, the factor related to food involvement, namely whether they imagined that they prepared the described meals or not, also played an important role. This could be related to the IKEA effect, where doing something for yourself leads to a more
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rewarding experience. In this study we did not explicitly ask the participants to imagine that they prepared the meal, but researchers could use this insight in future scenarios on participants who do prepare meals with some frequency. This finding shows that other factors should be considered when investigating the resulting satisfaction of consuming healthy meals.
26.4
General discussion
Our previous work (Table 26.1), as well as the two case studies in Section 26.3, used verbal and/or pictorial evocation of some contextual information (location, company, format of consumption, and combinations thereof ), or scenarios, where a certain situation and actions are described. The respondents were asked to vividly imagine this and indicate their emotional reactions, or level of satisfaction with the product(s)/meals presented. From our point of view, providing a context when people are asked in a non-real-world setting to evaluate their emotions towards foods is essential due to the very nature of emotion responses. However, the approaches described have their strengths and limitations. From the early research on context evocation on hedonic ratings of food products, this empirical extension to emotion research does provide more reliable and stable results (Piqueras-Fiszman & Jaeger, 2014b) compared to laboratory settings where no context information is given. Respondents are good at imagining themselves in that occasion with more or less vividness and the responses seem more ecologically valid as seen in the range of studies overviewed here. That said, we have not compared the results with a test conducted in the real occasion as described in the written evoked context. Clearly, real-world circumstances are extremely complex and not even stable for the same person from one day to the other. This fact makes it virtually impossible to predict with accuracy how a person will emotionally respond to a product or meal. However, we can assume that when we ask people to imagine themselves in a situation such as a weekend breakfast, people will tend to imagine a representative occasion. We can only speculate that the emotional state of the person will be stable in that representative occasion. That brings us to our next point. If we provide more details or actions or even put participants in a simulated environment (including virtual reality; VR) to avoid the imagination part of the task, does it really have more validity? One could argue that a person might not feel “comfortable” because the simulated environment might not be an environment they would usually be in (e.g., Meiselman, 1996; Weber, King, & Meiselman, 2004). In that sense, is it not more convenient to rely on people’s own imagination bringing them to a place or situation that to them is “real”, despite the variability among individuals? We believe it all depends on the research question, but for emotion research, people would have to be in their most personalized circumstances/environments. So far, it is difficult to say that other approaches, such as simulated environments or VR (where people visualize nothing else but an environment), work better for product-based emotion research. In particular the latter is still in its infancy and seems poised to advance (e.g., Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017). However, it remains a fundamental concern that VR could distract/hinder people from completing
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their own picture—personalizing it with people they know, for instance. Additionally, at the moment VR with food research is difficult due to the fact that the food cannot easily be consumed while wearing VR equipment. In an MSc thesis (Van Hooft & Piqueras-Fiszman, 2017) where participants had to taste cherry tomatoes while watching through a VR headset a video simulating a commute on a train, the use of VR led to less positive hedonic responses compared to a traditional CLT or 2D visualization. That said, with other products which do not involve tasting or ingestion, such as sunscreen (Andersen, Kraus, Ritz, & Bredie, 2019), or in food-choice paradigms (e.g., Siegrist et al., 2019), VR seems to be a promising tool. The reliance on consumers’ ability to deeply evoke and imagine specific situations, even if familiar to them, is a cause for concern with scenarios. Legitimately, one could ask whether the data generated by consumers are good indicators of the responses that would be observed with actual consumption behavior/in actual situations. They would be expected to vary depending on the response/behavior being studied, and tentatively this is a lesser concern for sensory perceptions than emotional associations. In Case Study 2, described in Section 26.3.3, respondents had to imagine themselves having an evening meal and at the same time imagine a positive event or goal, or eating in a nice home environment. Perhaps this amount of imagery led to hypothetical evaluations different from the evaluations that respondents would have given had they actually had the meals in front of them to taste. Tentatively, caution should be taken to avoid making people imagine too many events, situations, or food consumption. The extensive need to cleanse data to drop participants that indicated they did not vividly evoke the situation or did not experience positive emotions as predicted could support this suggestion. Whether the data collection using online surveys was a factor herein is not known, but it is a possibility that should be investigated. Additional research is required to establish the pros/cons of different means of evoking contexts in product research. This will enable more informed decisions of when they are suitable and when they are an unsatisfactory and convenience-based proxy for research in natural environments. Arguing in favor of the latter, Pham (2013) states that “participants who are asked to project themselves into certain consumption situations are likely to adopt overly analytical mindsets that are not representative of how consumers actually respond to such situations in real life (see, e.g., Dunn & Ashton-James, 2008; Snell, Gibbs, & Varey, 1995, for relevant findings)” (p. 420). He further argues that “scenarios are poorly suited to the study of “hot” variables such as emotional responses and motivational states, whose influence is difficult to imagine without a genuine experience (Pham, 2004)” (p. 420). We regard these as legitimate concerns and advocate that comparisons of emotional associations from evoked context and real situations be performed. Possibly contexts that are appropriate and familiar to consumers, coupled with the experience of actual product consumption is less likely to suffer from these biases. While acknowledging that “real consumption situations are rich with dynamic visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory stimuli which serve as a vivid source of contextual information” (Bangcuyo et al., 2015), and that evoked context will never be able to replicate this, we believe that eliciting emotional associations to products under evoked context is better than not evoking context when data are elicited in laboratory settings.
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Conclusion
Context is important when undertaking food-related emotion research and without knowledge of when, where, what, what and by/ with whom foods/beverages are consumed it is difficult to obtain complete and accurate consumer insights. Natural environments represent the “gold standard” ( Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017), but they are often more demanding for consumer researchers than laboratory settings. The use of scenarios to evoke consumption context in laboratory settings can be used to overcome this limitation. Typically they describe a situation that the consumer can imagine (picnic lunch or eating dinner at home while watching TV) and are used as a frame of reference while eliciting emotional associations to products. The present chapter has reviewed past research using scenarios to evoke context in emotion research within the field of Sensory and Consumer Science and also presented two case studies to illustrate extended applications of scenarios. Collectively, the two case studies demonstrated that consumers are capable of using lengthy scenarios to evoke complex situations, which do not only describe a specific consumption situation but behaviors associated with engaging in/positively enhancing a meal occasion. This broadens the possible application of scenarios in sensory and consumer research and enables investigation of imagined behavioral interventions as associated, for example, with creating positive change for personal health and wellbeing. However, care likely needs to be taken to ensure that the required mental imagery and cognitive mental burden does not become so significant that consumers struggle to vividly evoke the focal scenario. With the continued development of VR, it may be that these limitations can be overcome, but other limitations arise that require consideration and further development in VR methodology itself. Most importantly, however, is the caution that evoked context cannot replace real settings and will only ever be able to act as a proxy. How well they perform this role is not certain, but we believe that providing some contextual information is better than providing none.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank the financial support from two organizations: The New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation & Employment, and the New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Ltd. Also, YiXun Xia is thanked for the support in preparing the manuscript.
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