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Comparisons of taste perceptions and preferences of Japanese and Australian consumers: overview and implications for cross-cultural sensory research
PII: S0950-3293(98)00021-4
Food Quality and Preference Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 393±402, 1998 # 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0950-3293/98/$19.00+0.00
COMPARISONS OF TASTE PERCEPTIONS AND PREFERENCES OF JAPANESE AND AUSTRALIAN CONSUMERS: OVERVIEW AND IMPLICATIONS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL SENSORY RESEARCH John Prescott* Sensory Science Research Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand (Accepted 22 May 1998)
important in¯uences, both innate and environmental, on such perceptions and preferences (Prescott and Bell, 1995). What it is less clear, however, is how such generic research can assist in the production of speci®c foods which meet the expectations of target consumers in export markets. During the past few years, we have been conducting studies comparing the taste and food perceptions and preferences of Australians and Japanese and, more recently, other east and south-east Asian cultures such as Taiwan and Korea. At the time we commenced our research, most of the information on Japanese food preferences available to the food industry was either product speci®c or consisted largely of beliefs based on anecdotes about the dierent nature of Japanese consumers. Such beliefs were mostly derived from experiences with failed products in the Japanese market. The Japanese consumer, for instance, was believed to be highly sensitive to variations in tastes and smells compared to their Western counterpart. Consequently, because of the paucity of good consumer sensory studies, the food industry had been operating on a `trial and error' basis when attempting to formulate products for the Japanese market. In particular, the use of distribution agents and buyers in the export market to provide information on product acceptability failed to produce an understanding of a product's sensory strengths and weaknesses, and tended to reinforce ideas regarding the inaccessibility of knowledge regarding the preferences of Japanese consumers. Our studies of these consumers aimed to provide a generic basis for the food industry in its eorts to successfully export to Japan and other Asian markets. In other words, we wished to provide a scienti®c knowledge base and starting point to assist food companies, rather than to replace necessary consumer sensory evaluations of speci®c products. The aim of this paper is to review these studies with a view to assessing the general lessons that can be inferred from this research, and to indicate how our research experiences point to future directions in cross-cultural studies. In considering the results of the
ABSTRACT A program of research that compared the taste perceptions and preferences of Japanese and Australian consumer panels is reviewed from the point of view of the general issues that have emerged. These studies revealed few cross-cultural dierences in the perceptions of the panels, implicating an important role for dietary experience in dierences in preference. There was also little evidence for cross-cultural in¯uences on panellists' assessment behaviour, such as scale usage. Studies of predominantly sweet and salty foods from both Australia and Japan illustrated the importance of familiarity with the overall product as an in¯uence on the assessment of individual sensory characteristics. Subsequent attempts to overcome this in¯uence by comparing cross-cultural responses to the manipulation of tastes within foods common to both cultures revealed no dierences in the optimum tastant level within each of the foods. The implications of these studies for future cross-cultural research is addressed, and it is argued that future studies need to develop methods for determining the acceptability of relatively novel foods speci®cally developed for export markets, and also to address the complexity of food preferences from the point of view of both sensory and non-sensory in¯uences. # 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
INTRODUCTION Studying perceptions of, and preferences for, chemosensory qualities and foods across dierent cultures produces valuable data that enhance our understanding of the *Fax: +64 3 479 7567; e-mail: [email protected]. ac.nz 393
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generic studies that were undertaken, there appear to be certain general issues that the research identi®ed, some of which are detailed below.
MEASURING CONSUMER RESPONSES IN CROSSC ULT UR AL S T UDIE S Understanding cultural values is clearly important in trying to predict consumer responses. However, the extent to which diering values would impact on, or interact with, standard sensory methodologies was unclear during the initial research studies. For example, the well known reluctance of Japanese consumers to give oence by directly criticising (Christopher, 1984) led many food company observers to be sceptical regarding the ability of standard sensory techniques to provide direct access to accurate consumer preferences. In reality, however, there was little evidence of this. In studies of hedonic responses to variations in taste intensities in both solutions (Prescott et al., 1992) and foods (Prescott et al., 1998), the use of bitter compounds, such as caeine, indicated that Japanese consumers were prepared to express a high degree of dislike. Moreover, in manipulations of other, non-aversive tastes, such as sweetness, there appeared to be no consistent bias for Japanese panels to give consistently higher hedonic ratings than the Australian panels (Prescott et al., 1997), as might result from cultural in¯uences on the ratings. It is likely that the use of standard sensory methodologies, such as isolation in booths or with partitions during evaluations, actually facilitated such access by providing an environment conducive to independent responses. By contrast, focus group methodologies such as are used in market research, could be expected to be more in¯uenced by such biases. A related question was whether or not there would be cross-cultural dierences in the way in which the Japanese and Australian consumers used rating scales. Again, there were suggestions that `structured' rating scales, such as the 9 point category scale, would be more likely to be used consistently by untrained Japanese consumers, because of the belief that structure in decision making was highly valued. Although not formally addressed, there are data that bear on this question. We conducted studies using both labelled category scales (e.g. Prescott et al., 1992; Laing et al., 1994) and unstructured line scales (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). In the latter case, there were no statistically signi®cant dierences in the psychophysical responses of several Japanese and Australian panels across dierent levels of sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness in a variety of dierent foods, a fact which argues for equivalent scale usage. In addition to these empirical results, there may also be good theoretical reasons for using unstructured line
scales in cross-cultural studies. While the use of speci®c language terms to describe sensory properties has been previously discussed (see for example O'Mahony and Ishii, 1986), there are no studies which have addressed the extent to which one can regard the spacing of the categories themselves as equivalent across cultures. Hence, in the use of the standard 9 point hedonic category scale, is the dierence between the Japanese terms for moderately and extremely equivalent to the dierence perceived in an English speaking culture? This question also touches upon the larger issue of the extent to which semantic descriptors attached to rating scales can demonstrate the required psychometric properties, whether interval or ratio (for an example of a recent study that has addressed this issue see Green et al., 1993). The use of unstructured line scales does not solve this issue, of course, but it may remove one level at which scale usage may dier culturally.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTION Innate factors have often been implicated in the genesis of food preferences. Such factors include innate taste preferences (Desor et al., 1973, 1975; Steiner, 1977) and inherited anatomical dierences such as those re¯ected by dierent responses to the taste of 6-n-propylthiouracil and phenylthiocarbamide (Bartoshuk, 1993). In the latter case, there are studies that have assessed dierent cultures for the incidence of tasters and non-tasters of these substances (Fischer, 1982; Sato et al., 1997). Given the potential for such dierences, there are reasons to believe that cultures might dier in their perception of sensory qualities which could underlie dierences in taste or food preferences. One of our initial studies assessed the hedonic responses of Australian and Japanese panels to increasing concentrations of prototypical tastants Ð sucrose, citric acid, sodium chloride, caeine, and three umami tastants Ð monosodium glutamate (MSG), inosine monophosphate (IMP), and guanosine monophosphate (GMP) (Prescott et al., 1992). The generally invariant pattern of these data across cultures (see Fig. 1) strongly points to factors outside dietary experience in the formation of hedonic responses to basic tastes. As such, they are consistent with those data which suggest that some, if not all, hedonic responses to tastants are present at birth. However, it is likely that the eects of dierent dietary experiences are also re¯ected in these data, such as in the greater preference shown by the Japanese panels to higher concentrations of sour and umami tastes. Figure 1 also shows the previously unpublished hedonic ratings of Taiwanese consumers across ®ve of these same tastants. Again, although the absolute magnitudes of the ratings
Comparisons of Japanese and Australian Consumers 395
FIG. 1. Mean Japanese, Taiwanese and Australian hedonic ratings for sucrose, sodium chloride, citric acid, caeine and monosodium glutamate over six concentrations of each tastant. The Japanese and Australian data are taken from Prescott et al. (1992). The Taiwanese data were collected by Dr Fred Lin, Shih Chien College, Taipei, Taiwan and the means re¯ect responses from 73 males and females collected using the same protocols and 9 point hedonic category rating scales as the Japanese and Australian studies.
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vary between cultures, particularly for MSG and NaCl, the response patterns are very similar. These data, while not directly addressing the source of preferences, provides some indications that cross-cultural dierences between Japanese and Australian taste preferences within foods are more likely to be based on dierential exposures rather than on innate dierences. The question of perception of tastes was addressed more directly in a comparison of the ability to detect variations in the concentrations of sucrose, citric acid, sodium chloride and caeine (Laing et al., 1993). The purpose of this study was to determine if Japanese consumers were more likely than Australian consumers to detect small variations in the taste qualities of foods. A negative ®nding with taste solutions would suggest this to be unlikely. Two reference concentrations on the psychophysical function of these tastants were selected and the panels made paired comparisons between the reference solutions and several small increments in concentration. At neither of the two reference concentrations of these tastants were there dierences in the ability of Australian and Japanese panels to detect small increments in concentration of the tastant, as indicated by similar Weber fractions. Variations in ratings of the intensity of sensory qualities may re¯ect either the eects of innate physiological mechanisms, e.g. sensitivity to PROP (Bartoshuk, 1993), or the eects of experience, e.g. short or long term context eects (Riskey et al., 1979; Stevenson and Prescott, 1994), related to cross-cultural dierences in exposure to food qualities (Moskowitz et al., 1975; O'Mahony and Ishii, 1986). We undertook a number of studies with Australian and Japanese panels in which panellists rated both intensity and liking for taste qualities in a range of predominantly salty (Prescott et al., 1993) or predominantly sweet (Laing et al., 1994) foods drawn from both countries. Products included foods that had equivalents in both countries (e.g. strawberry and apricot jams and marmalade; milk, dark and white chocolate; pumpkin soup; peanut butter) and other products that were unique to each country (e.g. corn chips [Australian] and prawn chips [Japanese]; chicken soup [A] and miso soup [J]; Muesli (A) and Chokowa [J] breakfast cereal). In both sets of studies, a number of general ®ndings were apparent. Although both Australian and Japanese panellists discriminated between the sweetness (e.g. grapefruit juice) and saltiness (e.g. potato chips) of similar Australian and Japanese products, there was a high level of agreement between the panels in their ratings of sweetness and saltiness intensity. For example, in only ®ve of the 30 sweet products was there signi®cant disagreement between Australian and Japanese panels regarding sweetness intensity (Laing et al., 1994). A subsequent series of studies varied the concentrations of the taste qualities Ð sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness Ð within foods that were common to both cultures (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). While there was
some disagreement in relation to the intensity of some complex attributes that were also rated (see below), in none of the foods did the Australian and Japanese panels disagree on the intensity of the manipulated tastant across the range of concentrations. Such failures to ®nd cross-cultural dierences may be cautiously interpreted to imply some degree of equivalence in perception of those qualities. They are unlikely to represent merely a failure to ®nd dierences due to, for example, considerations of statistical power, since, in all of the studies cited, dierences in hedonic responses to products were apparent even when the panels agreed on intensity. Thus, these studies found no evidence that Japanese and Australian consumers dier in the way they perceive tastes or in their ability to ®nely discriminate taste dierences. This is consistent with the fact that the evidence for cross-cultural dierences in perceptions of taste qualities is not strong, even when dierential exposure to those qualities can be demonstrated (Prescott and Bell, 1995). Although there is research which shows that some dierences in preferences may be at least partly explained by perceptual dierences (Drewnowski and Rock, 1995), preferences for tastes within foods are more likely to be shaped by differing exposures to those tastes (Harris and Booth, 1987; Pangborn and Pecore, 1982; Pangborn and Giovanni, 1984; Prescott and Khu, 1995; Sullivan and Birch, 1990), as they are for foods and other sensory qualities (Birch and Marlin, 1982; Crandall, 1985; Pliner, 1982; Rozin and Schiller, 1980).
THE ROLE OF FAMILIARIT Y IN DETERMINING PREFERENCE An important question that we wished to answer in our research was whether or not there were any consistent patterns of cross-cultural dierences in preferences that could be used to guide product development. This question was considered important since such generalisations would allow some guidance for product development, independent of speci®c products. For example, the fact that Japan is known to have a higher per capita salt intake than many western countries (Denton, 1982) and that salt intake will in¯uence taste preferences (Bertino and Beauchamp, 1986) suggests that such generalisations may, in principle, be possible. As noted earlier, the studies in which Australian and Japanese panels evaluated Australian and Japanese predominantly sweet and salty foods, while showing few panel dierences in rated intensity, did reveal dierences in hedonic responses. Thus, the Japanese and Australian panels disagreed in their ratings of sweetness liking for ®ve out of six beverages and three out of six biscuits (Laing et al., 1994). However, there was no obvious pattern apparent from the studies. That is, the Japanese
Comparisons of Japanese and Australian Consumers 397 panels did not rate their liking for sweet or salty foods as consistently higher or lower than the Australian panels. Thus, while Japanese liked the saltiness of Australian nuts, they disliked the saltiness of Australian seafood, which was considered too salty (Prescott et al., 1993). As a result, across a whole category of products (e.g. crackers or seafood), taste intensity did not predict whether a taste was liked for a particular food. It was, therefore, not possible to make general statements about the Japanese response to sweetness or saltiness, such as ``Japanese consumers prefer sweeter (saltier)/less sweet (salty) foods''. What did emerge, however, is the importance of the product context for judging such sensory qualities. In
several cases, higher hedonic ratings were given by a panel to the sweetness or saltiness of the panel's domestic product, despite a lack of dierence between the Australian and Japanese products in terms of ratings of the taste intensity (Laing et al., 1994; Prescott et al., 1993). Examples of this apparent paradox are shown in Fig. 2. These data illustrate the importance of whole product context in judging sensory qualities. Since the panels were blind to the products' origins, the data may also illustrate the importance of familiarity with the overall ¯avour of that product in rating hedonic responses to individual sensory attributes. Equally, the data suggest that ratings of taste intensity are less in¯uenced by product context.
FIG. 2. Australian (*) and Japanese (*) ratings of the intensity of, and liking for, the saltiness of crackers and sweetness of milk chocolate. In each case, data for products from both Australia and Japan are shown. Responses were made on 5 (intensity) and 7 (hedonic) point category rating scales. For the crackers, each point represents averaged data over several similar products. For the milk chocolate, only one product from each country is being compared. Data points associated with dierent letters are signi®cantly dierent. These data are taken from Prescott et al. (1993) and Laing et al. (1994).
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Hence, the data suggest that the degree of familiarity of products being evaluated is important in in¯uencing liking for individual tastes. This is not very surprising given the research, noted earlier, showing the role of exposure in the development of liking. Clearly, such results point, ®rstly, to the need to assess the degree of familiarity that consumers have with a product from a dierent culture and, secondly, to the fact that unfamiliar products can be expected to produce responses due to neophobia (Pliner and Pelchat, 1991) which impact on the consumers' liking for the sensory qualities of the product. Partly in response to these ®ndings, we conducted the studies mentioned above in which the taste qualities within foods (sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness) were manipulated over various levels (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). In doing this, we assessed the range of taste intensities of products in both the Australian and Japanese markets, and produced product variants using tastant concentrations that fell within this range. By using foods common to both countries Ð ice cream, orange and grapefruit juice, corn¯akes, salad dressing Ð we considered that hedonic responses to variations in tastant intensity would be independent of familiarity. The interesting ®nding that emerged from these studies is that, for each food, there was agreement between the Australian and Japanese panels on the optimum (preferred) level of the manipulated tastant. Dierences between panels, when they occurred, resulted from deviations from this optimum level in terms of increases or decreases in the concentration of the manipulated tastant or related to the products' other sensory attributes that the panels rated. The conclusion that could be drawn from these studies was that the optimum tastant level was `exported' along with the product, since all of the products were originally Western. The similarity in responses across the two cultures again reinforces the importance of familiarity in shaping preference for sensory qualities.
C R O S S - C ULT UR AL RE SE AR C H AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT It is dicult to draw conclusions from this research with regard to the development of products for a market like Japan. Partly, this is due to a focus on taste qualities whereas a variety of other qualities such as ¯avours and textures will also be important (see below). Other diculties derive from the way in which sensory questions are asked, both in the studies cited above and in sensory evaluations of existing products for export markets. There are two main problems. Firstly, the most apparent of these problems is that research tends to be undertaken on current products and their variants to identify potential failures and to assess how relatively
acceptable products might be improved. It could be argued that this approach is not prescriptive enough, particularly if the aim is to develop products for markets whose current diet is dissimilar to one's own. In other words, there is a need to develop speci®c foods for overseas markets, rather than just assess if current foods are acceptable. However, if it is the case that lack of familiarity will prevent an unbiased assessment of the sensory properties of Western foods in Japan or other Asian markets, then it becomes problematic how to determine the response to completely novel products. Although neophobic responses can be overcome by exposure to the food (Pliner, 1982), the initial response may mitigate against further consumption by consumers. One approach that addresses this problem is the use of sensory research to de®ne the parameters of acceptable ¯avours in particular markets. Even with familiar types of food, appropriate ¯avours can be de®ned, in a manner analogous to the ways in which appropriateness of use has been de®ned for foods (Schutz, 1994). Sensory research can be used in advance of the development of products for a market to determine expectations of ¯avour for product categories. This can be seen as a way of de®ning the `¯avour principles' for dierent types of foods, a term that refers to the distinctive combinations of ¯avours that distinguish one culture's cuisine from that of another culture (Rozin, 1976, 1983). For example, the cuisine of Japan is characterised by a ¯avour principle that includes the ¯avours of soy, miso and rice wine. This combination is considered to identify a food as uniquely Japanese in origin. Rozin (1976) saw the use of a recognised ¯avour principle as one way for a culture to incorporate new foods into its cuisine without producing neophobic responses. By extension, it may be possible to de®ne the ¯avour principles of food types for a particular culture as a way of understanding how to produce ¯avours which are appropriate and familiar. The available literature on the types of ¯avours that might be appropriate for dierent food types in export markets tends not to be based on systematic research (see for example Grivetti, 1975; Pangborn, 1975; Wilson, 1975). One exception is a recent study of Indonesian consumers (Easton et al., 1997) which assessed the degree of appropriateness of ¯avours for dierent categories of products, namely biscuits, ice cream and confectionary. It was found, for example, that while ¯avours like chocolate, orange, lemon and strawberry were considered appropriate biscuit ¯avours, papaya ¯avour was very inappropriate. In addition, some unusual biscuit ¯avours (for a Western diet), such as mango and passionfruit, were considered appropriate. Flavours also showed speci®city to food types. For example, ginger was rated as a highly appropriate ¯avour for confectionary, but not for biscuits or ice cream. Data such as these may allow the initial formulation of products for export to be based on sensory knowledge rather than on trial and error procedures using existing products.
Comparisons of Japanese and Australian Consumers 399
IDE N T IF Y IN G T HE IMP O R TA N T FACTORS INFLUENCING PREFERENCE The second problem in the way cross-cultural studies have been conducted to date is that there has been little attempt to address the complexity of food preferences, either in terms of the sensory complexity of foods or in terms of the non-sensory factors that in¯uence and ®lter responses to the sensory characteristics. In terms of the sensory aspects of foods, our own studies of taste are clearly limited in their attempts to determine the important dierences cross-culturally, since both ¯avour and texture are likely to be more important in¯uences on acceptability in many foods. Foods are complex systems in which perceptions of, and preferences for, the various sensory characteristics are interdependent, and cross-cultural research should re¯ect this complexity. Consumers will have expectations regarding the optimal sweetness/acid balance for fruit ¯avours and fat/sugar content for dairy products, to take two straightforward examples. It is important to know which sensory characteristics, particularly in combination, are crucial for determining acceptability in target markets. Studying foods as complex phenomena allows an assessment of the sensory attributes that are the most important in¯uences on overall acceptability of the product. Research has shown that some sensory attributes (commonly, taste/¯avour) are clearly more important than others (Moskowitz and Krieger, 1993, 1995), but this clearly depends upon the type of food. In unpublished studies of beef varieties using Australian and Japanese panels, principal components analysis showed that, across all panellists, the appearance and fat content of the samples accounted for considerably more of the variance of the data than odour or taste. The relative importance of sensory characteristics in in¯uencing overall acceptability also varies between individuals (Moskowitz and Krieger, 1993, 1995), perhaps as a function of experience, and thus may also dier between cultures. It is therefore important to assess not just the attributes which consumers in dierent cultures like or dislike, but also those which are the important attributes determining the overall acceptability of a food. In our studies that manipulated tastant concentrations within foods (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998), we addressed this question through the use of best ®t regression models to determine which combinations of attribute ratings best predicted overall acceptability for the Australian and Japanese panels. As with the tastant ratings, for all of the foods there was a high degree of commonality in the models for each panel, although this may have re¯ected the limited number of attributes examined.
Sensory studies which seek to re¯ect the complexity of foods are, however, themselves problematic, due to the limited descriptive vocabularies of consumers. Even with commonly used, familiar sensory qualities, concept alignment may be an issue. In our taste manipulation studies, there was disagreement between the Australian and Japanese panels on the fruitiness of orange and grapefruit juices and the creaminess of ice cream (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). Both of these attributes can re¯ect multiple sensory qualities Ð sugar/acid balance, and fruit pulp content for the juices; and both ¯avour and textural aspects for ice cream. It becomes important, then, to know whether both cultures in a study de®ne the qualities in equivalent terms. One technique that is increasingly used to investigate the complexity of foods and to determine the important in¯uences on overall acceptability is Preference Mapping (Greenho and MacFie, 1994). This technique is able to combine detailed descriptive analyses of product attributes undertaken by a trained panel and ratings of consumer acceptability. Product to product sensory dierences (e.g. variations in product formulation) can be mapped together with acceptability ratings to illustrate those sensory qualities that are associated with high acceptability. To date, there are no studies that have used this technique to assess cross-cultural sensory preferences, but it does oer the opportunity for greater, in detail understanding of how consumers in dierent cultures may dier in their hedonic responses to sensory qualities. A technique such as Preference Mapping can also potentially allow the interpretation of preference data from another culture to be related to trained panel descriptions and measurements conducted in one's own language. Nevertheless, some problems may still arise in studies using consumers with dissimilar cultures and languages, with what might be termed meta-attributes Ð qualities that are conceptual in nature and do not necessarily have a direct relationship with a single ingredient or, indeed, have a direct translation across languages. The Japanese concept of umami, and the way American subjects relate the taste of MSG to more familiar taste qualities, has been discussed by O'Mahony and Ishii (1986). In our own research, an unpublished study of Korean consumer preferences for noodles derived from dierent wheat varieties identi®ed the term kusu, which is regarded as an important and desirable attribute in noodle ¯avour. This term does not have an exact translation in English, but re¯ects a conglomeration of attributes into a single concept. Such terms may be speci®c to one class of food, and also conceivably to a single culture, and hence there may be a requirement to undertake focus group discussions prior to any consumer evaluations. Even then, however, if such attributes are shown to be important and the quality they represent desirable, then further studies are probably necessary in order to link variations in product formulation or raw material characteristics with variations in the target concept.
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The second aspect of dealing with the complexity of food preferences in cross-cultural sensory research relates to the interaction of sensory and non-sensory factors. Consumer preferences are a complex function of sensory (taste, odour, texture) acceptability, together with nonsensory factors, such as familiarity, expectations, and attitudes. Psychophysical and hedonic responses to sensory characteristics have been well researched in an enormous range of food products, whereas non-sensory factors (e.g. information on product origin or nutrition) have received much less attention. Moreover, even in studies within a given culture, assessment of the two classes of factors have seldom been combined to determine their relative importance and interactions in in¯uencing acceptability (for an exception see Vickers, 1993). The need to include non-sensory factors is particularly acute in studies of cross-cultural food preferences, since it is for overseas markets that we are most in need of information regarding cultural in¯uences on acceptability. A recent conjoint analysis study of beef assessed the importance of both sensory and non-sensory factors for consumers in four European countries although, since beef samples were not physically present, only the appearance was assessed (through photographs). Nevertheless, there were cross-cultural dierences in liking for dierent aspects of appearance, as well as in an indicator of perceived quality, place of purchase (Grunert, 1997). Studies along these lines, but with the inclusion of sensory evaluation of products, can determine if there are crosscultural dierences in the degree to which sensory factors determine the overall acceptability of a food product. Thus, a key question is not just what ¯avours are important for export food markets, but what aspects of a food: its sensory properties, image, `healthiness', price or origin. For example, the health impact of food is likely to assume increasing importance in rapidly developing Asian markets and, while dairy products such as cheeses are becoming increasingly accepted in these markets, the preferred fat levels in these products may be in¯uenced by existing health beliefs. Expectations formed from previous experience, or beliefs based on information about a food's taste or other attributes, play a profound role in consumers' responses to sensory properties of foods (Cardello, 1994; Deliza and MacFie, 1996). One model of the in¯uence of expectations that has received empirical support, the assimilation model, suggests that the assessment of foods during tasting is `brought into line' to match expectations (Cardello, 1994). So when expectations are raised, the sensory acceptability of foods can be increased. Recent research on food choice has focussed on expectations as determinants of preference and how they interact with, and modify, responses to the sensory properties of foods. Thus, it has been found that information about nutritional qualities aects the acceptability of foods (Kahkonen et al., 1996) and that information on food ingredients and use (Tuorila et al., 1994), taste (Pelchat
and Pliner, 1995) or nutritional (McFarlane and Pliner, 1997) qualities increases the willingness to try novel foods. Other research has demonstrated multiple sources of individual variability in responses to sensory stimuli. Sources of these individual variations include dierent attitudes, especially towards foods labelled as healthy or low in fat (Aaron et al., 1994; Solheim and Lawless, 1996; Sta¯eu et al., 1994); dierential responses to novel foods as a function of both personality factors (Pliner and Pelchat, 1991) and attitudes towards nutrition (McFarlane and Pliner, 1997); and responsiveness to sensory cues (Tepper, 1992). Comparing such variations between cultures, rather than individuals, may provide considerable understanding of the consumer psychology underlying food preferences in export markets. Using information that has been shown to impact on expectations and preferences (e.g. on taste, nutrition, image) may also be a means to gain acceptance for the introduction of novel ¯avours or foods to a culture. Research is needed to assess if information associated with food products in¯uences the eectiveness of exposure in the development of preferences for the sensory qualities of foods and to determine what types of information will in¯uence consumers to buy products in Asian markets so that such exposure can occur. Combining knowledge of the `¯avour principles' for dierent types of foods in initial product development with an understanding of the types of information that consumers value may be a powerful approach to the development of foods for export.
REFERENCES Aaron, J. I., Mela, D. J. and Evans, R. E. (1994) The in¯uences of attitudes, beliefs and label information on perceptions of reduced-fat spread. Appetite 22, 25±37. Bartoshuk, L. M. (1993) The biological basis of food perception and acceptance. Food Quality and Preference 4, 21±32. Bertino, M. and Beauchamp, G. K. (1986) Increasing dietary salt alters salt taste preference. Physiology and Behavior 38, 203± 213. Birch, L. L. and Marlin, D. W. (1982) I don't like it; I never tried it: Eects of exposure on two-year-old children's food preferences. Appetite 3, 353±360. Cardello, A. V. (1994) Consumer expectations and their role in food acceptance. In Measurement of Food Preferences, ed. H. J. H. MacFie and D. M. H. Thomson, pp. 253±297. Blackie Academic, Glasgow. Christopher, R. C. (1984) The Japanese Mind, Pan Books Ltd., London. Crandall, C. S. (1985) The liking of foods as a result of exposure: Eating doughnuts in Alaska. Journal of Social Psychology 125, 187±194. Deliza, R. and MacFie, H. J. H. (1996) The generation of sensory expectation by external cues and its eect on sensory perception and hedonic ratings: A review. Journal of Sensory Studies 11, 103±128.
Comparisons of Japanese and Australian Consumers 401 Denton, D. A. (1982) The Hunger for Salt: an Anthropologic, Physiological and Medical Analysis. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Desor, J. A., Maller, O. and Turner, R. E. (1973) Taste in acceptance of sugars by human infants. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 84(3), 496±501. Desor, J. A., Maller, O. and Andrews, K. (1975) Ingestive responses of human newborns to salty, sour, and bitter stimuli. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 89(8), 966±970. Drewnowski, A. and Rock, C. L. (1995) The in¯uence of genetic taste markers on food acceptance. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62, 506±511. Easton, K., Ng, F. and Bell, G. A. (1997) Taste preferences in the emerging Indonesian food market. Chemical Senses 22, 676. Fischer, R. (1982) Genetics and gustatory chemoreception in man and other primates. In The Chemical Senses and Nutrition, ed. M. Kare and O. Maller, pp. 61±81. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. Green, B. G., Shaer, G. S. and Gilmore, M. M. (1993) Derivation and evaluation of a semantic scale of oral sensation magnitude with apparent ratio properties. Chemical Senses 18, 683±702. Greenho, K. and MacFie, H. J. H. (1994). Preference mapping in practice. In Measurement of Food Preferences, ed. H. J. H. MacFie and D. M. H. Thomson, pp. 137±166. Blackie Academic, Glasgow. Grivetti, L. E. (1975) The importance of ¯avors in the Middle East. Food Technology (June), 38±40. Grunert, K. G. (1997) What's in a steak? A cross-cultural study on the quality perception of beef. Food Quality and Preference 8(3), 157±174. Harris, G. and Booth, D. A. (1987) Infants' preference for salt in food: its dependence upon recent dietary experience. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology 5, 97±104. Kahkonen, P., Tuorila, H. and Rita, H. (1996) How information enhances acceptability of a low-fat spread. Food Quality and Preference 7, 87±94. Laing, D. G., Prescott, J., Bell, G. A., Gillmore, R., James, C., Best, D. J., Allen, S., Yoshida, M. and Yamazaki, K. (1993) A cross-cultural study of taste discrimination with Australians and Japanese. Chemical Senses 18, 161±168. Laing, D. G., Prescott, J., Bell, G. A., Gillmore, R., Allen, S., Best, D. J., Yoshida, M., Yamazaki, K. and Ishii-Mathews, R. (1994) Responses of Japanese and Australian panel to sweetness in the context of dierent foods. Journal of Sensory Studies 9, 131±155. McFarlane, T. and Pliner, P. (1997) Increasing willingness to taste novel foods: Eects of nutrition and taste information. Appetite 28, 227±238. Moskowitz, H. R., Kumaraiah, V., Sharma, K. N., Jacobs, H. L. and Sharma, S. D. (1975) Cross-cultural dierences in simple taste preferences. Science 190, 1217±1218. Moskowitz, H. R. and Krieger, B. (1993) What sensory characteristics drive product quality? An assessment of individual dierences. Journal of Sensory Studies 8, 271±282. Moskowitz, H. R. and Krieger, B. (1995) The contribution of sensory liking to overall liking: An analysis of six food categories. Food Quality and Preference 6, 83±90. O'Mahony, M. and Ishii, R. (1986) A comparison of English and Japanese taste languages: Taste descriptive methodology, codability and the umami taste. British Journal of Psychology 77, 161±174.
Pangborn, R. M. (1975) Cross-cultural aspects of ¯avor preferences. Food Technology (June), 34±36. Pangborn, R. M. and Giovanni, M. E. (1984) Dietary intake of sweet foods and of dairy fats and resultant gustatory responses to sugar in lemonade and to fat in milk. Appetite 5, 317±327. Pangborn, R. M. and Pecore, S. D. (1982) Taste perception of sodium chloride in relation to dietary intake of salt. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 35, 510±520. Pelchat, M. L. and Pliner, P. (1995) Try it. You'll like it. Eects of information on willingness to try novel foods. Appetite 24, 153±166. Pliner, P. (1982) The eects of mere exposure on liking for edible substances. Appetite 3, 283±290. Pliner, P. and Pelchat, M. L. (1991) Neophobia in humans and the special status of foods of animal origin. Appetite 16, 205± 218. Prescott, J. and Bell, G. A. (1995) Cross-cultural determinants of food acceptability: Recent research on sensory perceptions and preferences. Trends in Food Science and Technology 6, 201± 205. Prescott, J. and Khu, B. (1995) Changes in preference for saltiness within soup as a function of exposure. Appetite 24, 302. Prescott, J., Laing, D., Bell, G., Yoshida, M., Gillmore, R., Allen, S., Yamazaki, K. and Ishii, R. (1992) Hedonic responses to taste solutions: a cross-cultural study of Japanese and Australian panels. Chemical Senses 17, 801±809. Prescott, J., Bell, G. A., Gillmore, R., Yoshida, M., Laing, D. G., Allen, S. and Yamazaki, K. (1993) Responses of Japanese and Australian panels to saltiness in the context of foods. Chemical Senses 18, 616. Prescott, J., Bell, G. A., Gillmore, R., Yoshida, M., Korac, S., Allen, S. and Yamazaki, K. (1997) Cross-cultural comparisons of Japanese and Australian responses to manipulations of sweetness in foods. Food Quality and Preference 8(1), 45±55. Prescott, J., Bell, G. A., Gillmore, R., Yoshida, M., O'Sullivan, M., Korac, S., Allen, S. and Yamazaki, K. (1998) Crosscultural comparisons of Japanese and Australian responses to manipulations of sourness, saltiness and bitterness in foods. Food Quality and Preference 9(1/2), 53±66. Riskey, D. R., Parducci, A. and Beauchamp, G. K. (1979) Eects of context in judgments of sweetness and pleasantness. Perception and Psychophysics 26, 171±176. Rozin, P. (1976). The selection of foods by rats, humans, and other animals. Advances in The Study of Behavior, pp. 21±76. Academic Press, New York. Rozin, P. and Schiller, D. (1980) The nature and acquisition of a preference for chili pepper by humans. Motivation and Emotion 4(1), 77±101. Rozin, E. (1983) Ethnic Cuisine: The Flavor-Principle Cookbook. The Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, Vermont. Sato, T., Okada, Y., Miyamoto, T. and Fujiyama, R. (1997) Distribution of non-tasters for phenylthiocarbamide and high sensitivity to quinine hydrochloride of the non-tasters in Japanese. Chemical Senses 22, 547±551. Schutz, H. G. (1994). Appropriateness as a measure of the cognitive-contextual aspects of food acceptance. In Measurement of Food Preferences, ed. H. J. H. MacFie and D. M. H. Thomson, pp. 25±50. Blackie Academic, Glasgow. Solheim, R. and Lawless, H. T. (1996) Consumer purchase probability aected by attitude towards low-fat foods, liking, private body consciousness and information on fat and price. Food Quality and Preference 7, 137±143.
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Sta¯eu, A., de Graaf, C. and van Staveren, W. A. (1994) Attitudes towards high-fat foods and their low-fat alternatives: Reliability and relationship with fat intake. Appetite 22, 183±196. Steiner, J. E. (1977). Facial expressions of the neonate infant indicating the hedonics of food-related chemical stimuli. In Taste and Development: The Genesis of Sweet Preference, ed. J. M. Weienbach, US Government Printing Oce, Washington. Stevenson, R. S. and Prescott, J. (1994) Eects of prior experience with capsaicin on ratings of its burn. Chemical Senses 19(6), 651±656. Sullivan, S. A. and Birch, L. L. (1990) Pass the sugar, pass the salt: Experience dictates preference. Developmental Psychology 26(4), 546±551.
Tepper, B. J. (1992) Dietary restraint and responsiveness to sensory-based food cues as measured by cephalic phase salivation and sensory speci®c satiety. Physiology and Behavior 52, 305±311. Tuorila, H., Meiselman, H. L., Bell, R., Cardello, A. V. and Johnson, W. (1994) Role of sensory and cognitive information in the enhancement of certainty and liking for novel and familiar foods. Appetite 23, 231±246. Vickers, Z. M. (1993) Incorporating tasting into a conjoint analysis of taste, health claim, price and brand for purchasing strawberry yogurt. Journal of Sensory Studies 8, 341±352. Wilson, C. S. (1975). Rice, ®sh, and coconuts Ð the bases of Southeast Asian ¯avors. Food Technology (June), 42±44.
Food Quality and Preference Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 393±402, 1998 # 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0950-3293/98/$19.00+0.00
COMPARISONS OF TASTE PERCEPTIONS AND PREFERENCES OF JAPANESE AND AUSTRALIAN CONSUMERS: OVERVIEW AND IMPLICATIONS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL SENSORY RESEARCH John Prescott* Sensory Science Research Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand (Accepted 22 May 1998)
important in¯uences, both innate and environmental, on such perceptions and preferences (Prescott and Bell, 1995). What it is less clear, however, is how such generic research can assist in the production of speci®c foods which meet the expectations of target consumers in export markets. During the past few years, we have been conducting studies comparing the taste and food perceptions and preferences of Australians and Japanese and, more recently, other east and south-east Asian cultures such as Taiwan and Korea. At the time we commenced our research, most of the information on Japanese food preferences available to the food industry was either product speci®c or consisted largely of beliefs based on anecdotes about the dierent nature of Japanese consumers. Such beliefs were mostly derived from experiences with failed products in the Japanese market. The Japanese consumer, for instance, was believed to be highly sensitive to variations in tastes and smells compared to their Western counterpart. Consequently, because of the paucity of good consumer sensory studies, the food industry had been operating on a `trial and error' basis when attempting to formulate products for the Japanese market. In particular, the use of distribution agents and buyers in the export market to provide information on product acceptability failed to produce an understanding of a product's sensory strengths and weaknesses, and tended to reinforce ideas regarding the inaccessibility of knowledge regarding the preferences of Japanese consumers. Our studies of these consumers aimed to provide a generic basis for the food industry in its eorts to successfully export to Japan and other Asian markets. In other words, we wished to provide a scienti®c knowledge base and starting point to assist food companies, rather than to replace necessary consumer sensory evaluations of speci®c products. The aim of this paper is to review these studies with a view to assessing the general lessons that can be inferred from this research, and to indicate how our research experiences point to future directions in cross-cultural studies. In considering the results of the
ABSTRACT A program of research that compared the taste perceptions and preferences of Japanese and Australian consumer panels is reviewed from the point of view of the general issues that have emerged. These studies revealed few cross-cultural dierences in the perceptions of the panels, implicating an important role for dietary experience in dierences in preference. There was also little evidence for cross-cultural in¯uences on panellists' assessment behaviour, such as scale usage. Studies of predominantly sweet and salty foods from both Australia and Japan illustrated the importance of familiarity with the overall product as an in¯uence on the assessment of individual sensory characteristics. Subsequent attempts to overcome this in¯uence by comparing cross-cultural responses to the manipulation of tastes within foods common to both cultures revealed no dierences in the optimum tastant level within each of the foods. The implications of these studies for future cross-cultural research is addressed, and it is argued that future studies need to develop methods for determining the acceptability of relatively novel foods speci®cally developed for export markets, and also to address the complexity of food preferences from the point of view of both sensory and non-sensory in¯uences. # 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
INTRODUCTION Studying perceptions of, and preferences for, chemosensory qualities and foods across dierent cultures produces valuable data that enhance our understanding of the *Fax: +64 3 479 7567; e-mail: [email protected]. ac.nz 393
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generic studies that were undertaken, there appear to be certain general issues that the research identi®ed, some of which are detailed below.
MEASURING CONSUMER RESPONSES IN CROSSC ULT UR AL S T UDIE S Understanding cultural values is clearly important in trying to predict consumer responses. However, the extent to which diering values would impact on, or interact with, standard sensory methodologies was unclear during the initial research studies. For example, the well known reluctance of Japanese consumers to give oence by directly criticising (Christopher, 1984) led many food company observers to be sceptical regarding the ability of standard sensory techniques to provide direct access to accurate consumer preferences. In reality, however, there was little evidence of this. In studies of hedonic responses to variations in taste intensities in both solutions (Prescott et al., 1992) and foods (Prescott et al., 1998), the use of bitter compounds, such as caeine, indicated that Japanese consumers were prepared to express a high degree of dislike. Moreover, in manipulations of other, non-aversive tastes, such as sweetness, there appeared to be no consistent bias for Japanese panels to give consistently higher hedonic ratings than the Australian panels (Prescott et al., 1997), as might result from cultural in¯uences on the ratings. It is likely that the use of standard sensory methodologies, such as isolation in booths or with partitions during evaluations, actually facilitated such access by providing an environment conducive to independent responses. By contrast, focus group methodologies such as are used in market research, could be expected to be more in¯uenced by such biases. A related question was whether or not there would be cross-cultural dierences in the way in which the Japanese and Australian consumers used rating scales. Again, there were suggestions that `structured' rating scales, such as the 9 point category scale, would be more likely to be used consistently by untrained Japanese consumers, because of the belief that structure in decision making was highly valued. Although not formally addressed, there are data that bear on this question. We conducted studies using both labelled category scales (e.g. Prescott et al., 1992; Laing et al., 1994) and unstructured line scales (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). In the latter case, there were no statistically signi®cant dierences in the psychophysical responses of several Japanese and Australian panels across dierent levels of sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness in a variety of dierent foods, a fact which argues for equivalent scale usage. In addition to these empirical results, there may also be good theoretical reasons for using unstructured line
scales in cross-cultural studies. While the use of speci®c language terms to describe sensory properties has been previously discussed (see for example O'Mahony and Ishii, 1986), there are no studies which have addressed the extent to which one can regard the spacing of the categories themselves as equivalent across cultures. Hence, in the use of the standard 9 point hedonic category scale, is the dierence between the Japanese terms for moderately and extremely equivalent to the dierence perceived in an English speaking culture? This question also touches upon the larger issue of the extent to which semantic descriptors attached to rating scales can demonstrate the required psychometric properties, whether interval or ratio (for an example of a recent study that has addressed this issue see Green et al., 1993). The use of unstructured line scales does not solve this issue, of course, but it may remove one level at which scale usage may dier culturally.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTION Innate factors have often been implicated in the genesis of food preferences. Such factors include innate taste preferences (Desor et al., 1973, 1975; Steiner, 1977) and inherited anatomical dierences such as those re¯ected by dierent responses to the taste of 6-n-propylthiouracil and phenylthiocarbamide (Bartoshuk, 1993). In the latter case, there are studies that have assessed dierent cultures for the incidence of tasters and non-tasters of these substances (Fischer, 1982; Sato et al., 1997). Given the potential for such dierences, there are reasons to believe that cultures might dier in their perception of sensory qualities which could underlie dierences in taste or food preferences. One of our initial studies assessed the hedonic responses of Australian and Japanese panels to increasing concentrations of prototypical tastants Ð sucrose, citric acid, sodium chloride, caeine, and three umami tastants Ð monosodium glutamate (MSG), inosine monophosphate (IMP), and guanosine monophosphate (GMP) (Prescott et al., 1992). The generally invariant pattern of these data across cultures (see Fig. 1) strongly points to factors outside dietary experience in the formation of hedonic responses to basic tastes. As such, they are consistent with those data which suggest that some, if not all, hedonic responses to tastants are present at birth. However, it is likely that the eects of dierent dietary experiences are also re¯ected in these data, such as in the greater preference shown by the Japanese panels to higher concentrations of sour and umami tastes. Figure 1 also shows the previously unpublished hedonic ratings of Taiwanese consumers across ®ve of these same tastants. Again, although the absolute magnitudes of the ratings
Comparisons of Japanese and Australian Consumers 395
FIG. 1. Mean Japanese, Taiwanese and Australian hedonic ratings for sucrose, sodium chloride, citric acid, caeine and monosodium glutamate over six concentrations of each tastant. The Japanese and Australian data are taken from Prescott et al. (1992). The Taiwanese data were collected by Dr Fred Lin, Shih Chien College, Taipei, Taiwan and the means re¯ect responses from 73 males and females collected using the same protocols and 9 point hedonic category rating scales as the Japanese and Australian studies.
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vary between cultures, particularly for MSG and NaCl, the response patterns are very similar. These data, while not directly addressing the source of preferences, provides some indications that cross-cultural dierences between Japanese and Australian taste preferences within foods are more likely to be based on dierential exposures rather than on innate dierences. The question of perception of tastes was addressed more directly in a comparison of the ability to detect variations in the concentrations of sucrose, citric acid, sodium chloride and caeine (Laing et al., 1993). The purpose of this study was to determine if Japanese consumers were more likely than Australian consumers to detect small variations in the taste qualities of foods. A negative ®nding with taste solutions would suggest this to be unlikely. Two reference concentrations on the psychophysical function of these tastants were selected and the panels made paired comparisons between the reference solutions and several small increments in concentration. At neither of the two reference concentrations of these tastants were there dierences in the ability of Australian and Japanese panels to detect small increments in concentration of the tastant, as indicated by similar Weber fractions. Variations in ratings of the intensity of sensory qualities may re¯ect either the eects of innate physiological mechanisms, e.g. sensitivity to PROP (Bartoshuk, 1993), or the eects of experience, e.g. short or long term context eects (Riskey et al., 1979; Stevenson and Prescott, 1994), related to cross-cultural dierences in exposure to food qualities (Moskowitz et al., 1975; O'Mahony and Ishii, 1986). We undertook a number of studies with Australian and Japanese panels in which panellists rated both intensity and liking for taste qualities in a range of predominantly salty (Prescott et al., 1993) or predominantly sweet (Laing et al., 1994) foods drawn from both countries. Products included foods that had equivalents in both countries (e.g. strawberry and apricot jams and marmalade; milk, dark and white chocolate; pumpkin soup; peanut butter) and other products that were unique to each country (e.g. corn chips [Australian] and prawn chips [Japanese]; chicken soup [A] and miso soup [J]; Muesli (A) and Chokowa [J] breakfast cereal). In both sets of studies, a number of general ®ndings were apparent. Although both Australian and Japanese panellists discriminated between the sweetness (e.g. grapefruit juice) and saltiness (e.g. potato chips) of similar Australian and Japanese products, there was a high level of agreement between the panels in their ratings of sweetness and saltiness intensity. For example, in only ®ve of the 30 sweet products was there signi®cant disagreement between Australian and Japanese panels regarding sweetness intensity (Laing et al., 1994). A subsequent series of studies varied the concentrations of the taste qualities Ð sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness Ð within foods that were common to both cultures (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). While there was
some disagreement in relation to the intensity of some complex attributes that were also rated (see below), in none of the foods did the Australian and Japanese panels disagree on the intensity of the manipulated tastant across the range of concentrations. Such failures to ®nd cross-cultural dierences may be cautiously interpreted to imply some degree of equivalence in perception of those qualities. They are unlikely to represent merely a failure to ®nd dierences due to, for example, considerations of statistical power, since, in all of the studies cited, dierences in hedonic responses to products were apparent even when the panels agreed on intensity. Thus, these studies found no evidence that Japanese and Australian consumers dier in the way they perceive tastes or in their ability to ®nely discriminate taste dierences. This is consistent with the fact that the evidence for cross-cultural dierences in perceptions of taste qualities is not strong, even when dierential exposure to those qualities can be demonstrated (Prescott and Bell, 1995). Although there is research which shows that some dierences in preferences may be at least partly explained by perceptual dierences (Drewnowski and Rock, 1995), preferences for tastes within foods are more likely to be shaped by differing exposures to those tastes (Harris and Booth, 1987; Pangborn and Pecore, 1982; Pangborn and Giovanni, 1984; Prescott and Khu, 1995; Sullivan and Birch, 1990), as they are for foods and other sensory qualities (Birch and Marlin, 1982; Crandall, 1985; Pliner, 1982; Rozin and Schiller, 1980).
THE ROLE OF FAMILIARIT Y IN DETERMINING PREFERENCE An important question that we wished to answer in our research was whether or not there were any consistent patterns of cross-cultural dierences in preferences that could be used to guide product development. This question was considered important since such generalisations would allow some guidance for product development, independent of speci®c products. For example, the fact that Japan is known to have a higher per capita salt intake than many western countries (Denton, 1982) and that salt intake will in¯uence taste preferences (Bertino and Beauchamp, 1986) suggests that such generalisations may, in principle, be possible. As noted earlier, the studies in which Australian and Japanese panels evaluated Australian and Japanese predominantly sweet and salty foods, while showing few panel dierences in rated intensity, did reveal dierences in hedonic responses. Thus, the Japanese and Australian panels disagreed in their ratings of sweetness liking for ®ve out of six beverages and three out of six biscuits (Laing et al., 1994). However, there was no obvious pattern apparent from the studies. That is, the Japanese
Comparisons of Japanese and Australian Consumers 397 panels did not rate their liking for sweet or salty foods as consistently higher or lower than the Australian panels. Thus, while Japanese liked the saltiness of Australian nuts, they disliked the saltiness of Australian seafood, which was considered too salty (Prescott et al., 1993). As a result, across a whole category of products (e.g. crackers or seafood), taste intensity did not predict whether a taste was liked for a particular food. It was, therefore, not possible to make general statements about the Japanese response to sweetness or saltiness, such as ``Japanese consumers prefer sweeter (saltier)/less sweet (salty) foods''. What did emerge, however, is the importance of the product context for judging such sensory qualities. In
several cases, higher hedonic ratings were given by a panel to the sweetness or saltiness of the panel's domestic product, despite a lack of dierence between the Australian and Japanese products in terms of ratings of the taste intensity (Laing et al., 1994; Prescott et al., 1993). Examples of this apparent paradox are shown in Fig. 2. These data illustrate the importance of whole product context in judging sensory qualities. Since the panels were blind to the products' origins, the data may also illustrate the importance of familiarity with the overall ¯avour of that product in rating hedonic responses to individual sensory attributes. Equally, the data suggest that ratings of taste intensity are less in¯uenced by product context.
FIG. 2. Australian (*) and Japanese (*) ratings of the intensity of, and liking for, the saltiness of crackers and sweetness of milk chocolate. In each case, data for products from both Australia and Japan are shown. Responses were made on 5 (intensity) and 7 (hedonic) point category rating scales. For the crackers, each point represents averaged data over several similar products. For the milk chocolate, only one product from each country is being compared. Data points associated with dierent letters are signi®cantly dierent. These data are taken from Prescott et al. (1993) and Laing et al. (1994).
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Hence, the data suggest that the degree of familiarity of products being evaluated is important in in¯uencing liking for individual tastes. This is not very surprising given the research, noted earlier, showing the role of exposure in the development of liking. Clearly, such results point, ®rstly, to the need to assess the degree of familiarity that consumers have with a product from a dierent culture and, secondly, to the fact that unfamiliar products can be expected to produce responses due to neophobia (Pliner and Pelchat, 1991) which impact on the consumers' liking for the sensory qualities of the product. Partly in response to these ®ndings, we conducted the studies mentioned above in which the taste qualities within foods (sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness) were manipulated over various levels (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). In doing this, we assessed the range of taste intensities of products in both the Australian and Japanese markets, and produced product variants using tastant concentrations that fell within this range. By using foods common to both countries Ð ice cream, orange and grapefruit juice, corn¯akes, salad dressing Ð we considered that hedonic responses to variations in tastant intensity would be independent of familiarity. The interesting ®nding that emerged from these studies is that, for each food, there was agreement between the Australian and Japanese panels on the optimum (preferred) level of the manipulated tastant. Dierences between panels, when they occurred, resulted from deviations from this optimum level in terms of increases or decreases in the concentration of the manipulated tastant or related to the products' other sensory attributes that the panels rated. The conclusion that could be drawn from these studies was that the optimum tastant level was `exported' along with the product, since all of the products were originally Western. The similarity in responses across the two cultures again reinforces the importance of familiarity in shaping preference for sensory qualities.
C R O S S - C ULT UR AL RE SE AR C H AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT It is dicult to draw conclusions from this research with regard to the development of products for a market like Japan. Partly, this is due to a focus on taste qualities whereas a variety of other qualities such as ¯avours and textures will also be important (see below). Other diculties derive from the way in which sensory questions are asked, both in the studies cited above and in sensory evaluations of existing products for export markets. There are two main problems. Firstly, the most apparent of these problems is that research tends to be undertaken on current products and their variants to identify potential failures and to assess how relatively
acceptable products might be improved. It could be argued that this approach is not prescriptive enough, particularly if the aim is to develop products for markets whose current diet is dissimilar to one's own. In other words, there is a need to develop speci®c foods for overseas markets, rather than just assess if current foods are acceptable. However, if it is the case that lack of familiarity will prevent an unbiased assessment of the sensory properties of Western foods in Japan or other Asian markets, then it becomes problematic how to determine the response to completely novel products. Although neophobic responses can be overcome by exposure to the food (Pliner, 1982), the initial response may mitigate against further consumption by consumers. One approach that addresses this problem is the use of sensory research to de®ne the parameters of acceptable ¯avours in particular markets. Even with familiar types of food, appropriate ¯avours can be de®ned, in a manner analogous to the ways in which appropriateness of use has been de®ned for foods (Schutz, 1994). Sensory research can be used in advance of the development of products for a market to determine expectations of ¯avour for product categories. This can be seen as a way of de®ning the `¯avour principles' for dierent types of foods, a term that refers to the distinctive combinations of ¯avours that distinguish one culture's cuisine from that of another culture (Rozin, 1976, 1983). For example, the cuisine of Japan is characterised by a ¯avour principle that includes the ¯avours of soy, miso and rice wine. This combination is considered to identify a food as uniquely Japanese in origin. Rozin (1976) saw the use of a recognised ¯avour principle as one way for a culture to incorporate new foods into its cuisine without producing neophobic responses. By extension, it may be possible to de®ne the ¯avour principles of food types for a particular culture as a way of understanding how to produce ¯avours which are appropriate and familiar. The available literature on the types of ¯avours that might be appropriate for dierent food types in export markets tends not to be based on systematic research (see for example Grivetti, 1975; Pangborn, 1975; Wilson, 1975). One exception is a recent study of Indonesian consumers (Easton et al., 1997) which assessed the degree of appropriateness of ¯avours for dierent categories of products, namely biscuits, ice cream and confectionary. It was found, for example, that while ¯avours like chocolate, orange, lemon and strawberry were considered appropriate biscuit ¯avours, papaya ¯avour was very inappropriate. In addition, some unusual biscuit ¯avours (for a Western diet), such as mango and passionfruit, were considered appropriate. Flavours also showed speci®city to food types. For example, ginger was rated as a highly appropriate ¯avour for confectionary, but not for biscuits or ice cream. Data such as these may allow the initial formulation of products for export to be based on sensory knowledge rather than on trial and error procedures using existing products.
Comparisons of Japanese and Australian Consumers 399
IDE N T IF Y IN G T HE IMP O R TA N T FACTORS INFLUENCING PREFERENCE The second problem in the way cross-cultural studies have been conducted to date is that there has been little attempt to address the complexity of food preferences, either in terms of the sensory complexity of foods or in terms of the non-sensory factors that in¯uence and ®lter responses to the sensory characteristics. In terms of the sensory aspects of foods, our own studies of taste are clearly limited in their attempts to determine the important dierences cross-culturally, since both ¯avour and texture are likely to be more important in¯uences on acceptability in many foods. Foods are complex systems in which perceptions of, and preferences for, the various sensory characteristics are interdependent, and cross-cultural research should re¯ect this complexity. Consumers will have expectations regarding the optimal sweetness/acid balance for fruit ¯avours and fat/sugar content for dairy products, to take two straightforward examples. It is important to know which sensory characteristics, particularly in combination, are crucial for determining acceptability in target markets. Studying foods as complex phenomena allows an assessment of the sensory attributes that are the most important in¯uences on overall acceptability of the product. Research has shown that some sensory attributes (commonly, taste/¯avour) are clearly more important than others (Moskowitz and Krieger, 1993, 1995), but this clearly depends upon the type of food. In unpublished studies of beef varieties using Australian and Japanese panels, principal components analysis showed that, across all panellists, the appearance and fat content of the samples accounted for considerably more of the variance of the data than odour or taste. The relative importance of sensory characteristics in in¯uencing overall acceptability also varies between individuals (Moskowitz and Krieger, 1993, 1995), perhaps as a function of experience, and thus may also dier between cultures. It is therefore important to assess not just the attributes which consumers in dierent cultures like or dislike, but also those which are the important attributes determining the overall acceptability of a food. In our studies that manipulated tastant concentrations within foods (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998), we addressed this question through the use of best ®t regression models to determine which combinations of attribute ratings best predicted overall acceptability for the Australian and Japanese panels. As with the tastant ratings, for all of the foods there was a high degree of commonality in the models for each panel, although this may have re¯ected the limited number of attributes examined.
Sensory studies which seek to re¯ect the complexity of foods are, however, themselves problematic, due to the limited descriptive vocabularies of consumers. Even with commonly used, familiar sensory qualities, concept alignment may be an issue. In our taste manipulation studies, there was disagreement between the Australian and Japanese panels on the fruitiness of orange and grapefruit juices and the creaminess of ice cream (Prescott et al., 1997, 1998). Both of these attributes can re¯ect multiple sensory qualities Ð sugar/acid balance, and fruit pulp content for the juices; and both ¯avour and textural aspects for ice cream. It becomes important, then, to know whether both cultures in a study de®ne the qualities in equivalent terms. One technique that is increasingly used to investigate the complexity of foods and to determine the important in¯uences on overall acceptability is Preference Mapping (Greenho and MacFie, 1994). This technique is able to combine detailed descriptive analyses of product attributes undertaken by a trained panel and ratings of consumer acceptability. Product to product sensory dierences (e.g. variations in product formulation) can be mapped together with acceptability ratings to illustrate those sensory qualities that are associated with high acceptability. To date, there are no studies that have used this technique to assess cross-cultural sensory preferences, but it does oer the opportunity for greater, in detail understanding of how consumers in dierent cultures may dier in their hedonic responses to sensory qualities. A technique such as Preference Mapping can also potentially allow the interpretation of preference data from another culture to be related to trained panel descriptions and measurements conducted in one's own language. Nevertheless, some problems may still arise in studies using consumers with dissimilar cultures and languages, with what might be termed meta-attributes Ð qualities that are conceptual in nature and do not necessarily have a direct relationship with a single ingredient or, indeed, have a direct translation across languages. The Japanese concept of umami, and the way American subjects relate the taste of MSG to more familiar taste qualities, has been discussed by O'Mahony and Ishii (1986). In our own research, an unpublished study of Korean consumer preferences for noodles derived from dierent wheat varieties identi®ed the term kusu, which is regarded as an important and desirable attribute in noodle ¯avour. This term does not have an exact translation in English, but re¯ects a conglomeration of attributes into a single concept. Such terms may be speci®c to one class of food, and also conceivably to a single culture, and hence there may be a requirement to undertake focus group discussions prior to any consumer evaluations. Even then, however, if such attributes are shown to be important and the quality they represent desirable, then further studies are probably necessary in order to link variations in product formulation or raw material characteristics with variations in the target concept.
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The second aspect of dealing with the complexity of food preferences in cross-cultural sensory research relates to the interaction of sensory and non-sensory factors. Consumer preferences are a complex function of sensory (taste, odour, texture) acceptability, together with nonsensory factors, such as familiarity, expectations, and attitudes. Psychophysical and hedonic responses to sensory characteristics have been well researched in an enormous range of food products, whereas non-sensory factors (e.g. information on product origin or nutrition) have received much less attention. Moreover, even in studies within a given culture, assessment of the two classes of factors have seldom been combined to determine their relative importance and interactions in in¯uencing acceptability (for an exception see Vickers, 1993). The need to include non-sensory factors is particularly acute in studies of cross-cultural food preferences, since it is for overseas markets that we are most in need of information regarding cultural in¯uences on acceptability. A recent conjoint analysis study of beef assessed the importance of both sensory and non-sensory factors for consumers in four European countries although, since beef samples were not physically present, only the appearance was assessed (through photographs). Nevertheless, there were cross-cultural dierences in liking for dierent aspects of appearance, as well as in an indicator of perceived quality, place of purchase (Grunert, 1997). Studies along these lines, but with the inclusion of sensory evaluation of products, can determine if there are crosscultural dierences in the degree to which sensory factors determine the overall acceptability of a food product. Thus, a key question is not just what ¯avours are important for export food markets, but what aspects of a food: its sensory properties, image, `healthiness', price or origin. For example, the health impact of food is likely to assume increasing importance in rapidly developing Asian markets and, while dairy products such as cheeses are becoming increasingly accepted in these markets, the preferred fat levels in these products may be in¯uenced by existing health beliefs. Expectations formed from previous experience, or beliefs based on information about a food's taste or other attributes, play a profound role in consumers' responses to sensory properties of foods (Cardello, 1994; Deliza and MacFie, 1996). One model of the in¯uence of expectations that has received empirical support, the assimilation model, suggests that the assessment of foods during tasting is `brought into line' to match expectations (Cardello, 1994). So when expectations are raised, the sensory acceptability of foods can be increased. Recent research on food choice has focussed on expectations as determinants of preference and how they interact with, and modify, responses to the sensory properties of foods. Thus, it has been found that information about nutritional qualities aects the acceptability of foods (Kahkonen et al., 1996) and that information on food ingredients and use (Tuorila et al., 1994), taste (Pelchat
and Pliner, 1995) or nutritional (McFarlane and Pliner, 1997) qualities increases the willingness to try novel foods. Other research has demonstrated multiple sources of individual variability in responses to sensory stimuli. Sources of these individual variations include dierent attitudes, especially towards foods labelled as healthy or low in fat (Aaron et al., 1994; Solheim and Lawless, 1996; Sta¯eu et al., 1994); dierential responses to novel foods as a function of both personality factors (Pliner and Pelchat, 1991) and attitudes towards nutrition (McFarlane and Pliner, 1997); and responsiveness to sensory cues (Tepper, 1992). Comparing such variations between cultures, rather than individuals, may provide considerable understanding of the consumer psychology underlying food preferences in export markets. Using information that has been shown to impact on expectations and preferences (e.g. on taste, nutrition, image) may also be a means to gain acceptance for the introduction of novel ¯avours or foods to a culture. Research is needed to assess if information associated with food products in¯uences the eectiveness of exposure in the development of preferences for the sensory qualities of foods and to determine what types of information will in¯uence consumers to buy products in Asian markets so that such exposure can occur. Combining knowledge of the `¯avour principles' for dierent types of foods in initial product development with an understanding of the types of information that consumers value may be a powerful approach to the development of foods for export.
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