Comparison of asynchronous and synchronous modes to analyse consumer insights about food consistency. Free word association test in virtual context.

DELLA FONTANA, F.D.; ARMADA, M.; GOLDNER M.C.

Conferencia; International Web Conference on Food Choice and Motivation; 2022

Instituto Politécnico de Viseu

Free word association (FWA) is a projective technique in consumer science to analyse associations that first arise on mind, which might be relevant to know consumer food preferences. The Cognitive Salience Index (CSI) takes values between 0 and 1. In a list of several things, the first and most frequently mentioned words will have a higher CSI. In consumer science, this index allows to obtain insights related to food preferences and purchase. Although confinement has hindered the communication with consumers in sensory and consumer science, new virtual modalities are promising to contact them. On the other hand, in Latin America the word ?consistency? is commonly related to food texture by consumers, but it is not applied as a sensory descriptor. For this purpose, the aim of this study was to analyse and compare the associations about food consistency with two virtual modalities.A quanti-qualitative study was performed on 238 consumers. 137 answered an online self-administered survey made with Google forms (asynchronous mode) and 101 answered the same survey but in an online interview by videoconference (synchronous mode). In both surveys consumers had to express the first 3 associations that come to their minds when the stimulus ?food consistency?, ?consistent food?, ?very consistent food? and ?bit consistent food? was read. The responses were analysed by data triangulation and grouped in categories according to their similarities. The mention frequencies of each category were calculated. Contingency tables were built, and the percentages of each category mention for each virtual mode (synchronous/asynchronous) were calculated. The Chi2-test was used to study the association between the virtual method and the term category. Z-test was used to compare proportions. For categories in common between different stimulus and virtual modes CSIs were computed. The differences in the CSIs were analysed by ANOVA considering virtual modes and categories as fixed effects and its double interaction. When significant interactions were found, partitioned ANOVA was performed. The Tukey test was applied to compare means. Data analysis was performed with R (v. 4.1.2), InfoStat (v. 2020p) and SPSS (v. 25) and a 5% significant level was considered.2856 terms were elicited which were grouped in 33 different categories for ?food consistency?, 36 for ?consistent food?, 34 for ?very consistent food? and 36 for ?bit consistent food?. ?Physical status? (15%), ?soft? (10%), ?tactile texture? (10%), ?hardness? (9.5%) and ?general texture? (7.3%) were the most mentioned categories for ?food consistency?; ?solid food? (13%), ?hardness? (10%), ?soft food? (8.1%), ?firmness? (8.1 %) and ?semisolid food? (7.4%) for ?consistent food?; ?solid food? (21.6%), ?hardness? (12.9%), ?soft food? (5.3%), ?force/resistance? (5.3%) and ?appearance and visual texture? (4.9%) for ?very consistent food?; ?semisolid food? (12.9%), ?liquid food/drinks? (12.2%), ?physical status? (11.5%), ?soft? (8.4%) and ?appearance and visual texture? (6.9%) for ?bit consistent food?. When comparing both virtual modes of survey, the frequency of mention was significantly different (p3.862, df=1).Regarding the ANOVA of the CSI, a highly significant interaction (category x stimulus) was found (p