Quality perceptions

Food colorants play an important role in quality perception. Color is often the first notable characteristic of a food and it influences the expectations of consumers buying the product and also influences food handlers who make quality-related decisions, for example, during visual inspections." More specifically, color predetermines our expectations and perceptions of flavor and taste. " Color is interrelated with flavor intensity (detection threshold), with sweetness and salinity sensations, and also with our susceptibilities to and preferences for products. For example, consumers perceived a strongly red-colored strawberry-flavored drink to be sweeter than a less colored version, and yellow was associated with lemon and pink with grapefruit, but by reversing the colors, flavor perception changed." If food color is not appealing, consumers will not enjoy the flavor and texture of the food. ... 

Understanding quality perception. The starting point of a CQP-based quality assurance system should be the clear understanding of which product attributes are considered important and contribute to the quality perceptions of target consumers. This will help focus the system to control and assure only those attributes that are critical for quality perception. Decision-supporting tools can be found in the areas of consumer research, sensory studies, and new product design. 

Torjusen H, Lieblein G, Wandel M and Francis CA (2001) Food system orientation and quality perception among consumers and producers of organic food in Hedmark County, Norway . Food Quality and Preference, 12, 207-216. 

The selective use of CM depends on the intentions and quality percepts of the producer. However, realizing its benefits depends on grape quality (appropriate ripening stage, state of health, etc.). 

The complexities and interaction of composition on the quality perception of vermouth is illustrated with wild-apricot-based vermouth (Figs. 8.5-8.7). It shows that sweetness, flavor, and astringency are preferred at a sugar content of 8%, whereas body, appearance, and aroma were preferred at 12% sugar (Fig. 8.5). Body, flavor, aroma, and total acidity were scored better at an alcohol content of 19% (Fig. 8.6). The spice concentration preferred for volatile acidity, total acidity, flavor, and bitterness was 5% (Fig. 8.7), whereas body, sweetness, appearance, and astringency were preferred at a 2.5% level (Joshi et al, 201 la,b). 

The type and sophistication of materials characterization instrumentation made available for a given IC facility will depend on several factorsi oost/benefit, quality perceptions, process complexity, maturity of the process. Commercial support labs are becoming more readily available to meet the VLSI challenge. The mix of in-house versus external laboratory support then becomes a matter of choice based on considerations of sample turn-around time, maintaining security of proprietary devices or processes, and outside versus inside expenditures. 

Scholderer J., Brunso, K. and Gruneit, K.G. (2002) Organic pork consumer quality perceptions. Advances in Consumer Research, Volume XXIX29, 551 -557. 

Dahl, A. and Kristensen, N. (2004) Quality perceptions of organic food. Paper presented to Globalization, Risks and Resistance in Rural Economies and Societies, IRSA XI World Congress of Rural Sociology. Trondheim, July 25-30, Norway. 

Service quality perceptions result from a comparison of consumer expectations with the actual service performance. 

Multiattribute methods are based on the assumption that the quality perception of customers is determined by assessing distinctive attributes of the particular service. With regard to each attribute, the customer compares the expected and the received quality. The overall judgment then results from a weighted addition of those comparisons. The most prominent example of this type of method is SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al. 1988), a multiple-item scale consisting of 22 items grouped into five dimensions. 

Relationship between nonvolatile composition and sensory properties of premium Spanish red wines and their correlation to quality perception, [doi 10.1021/jfl02546f]. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(23), 12407-12416. 

Innovation in food requires thorough understanding of the customers involved. Many new products fail [42], because consumers are not fully understood beforehand. Quality perceptions may change over time. Consumers must be able to perceive that products have a number of desirable properties. Before they are willing to buy new products, they must be able to infer these properties from appropriate cues. These cues are pieces of information, which the consumer uses to make an inference about quality. For example, colour and fat content of meat are an indicator of taste and tenderness. Packages may contain information on intrinsic and extrinsic properties of food products. Brands may give information on quality levels, origin, and production standards. 

One of the most important characteristics of quality perception and consumer preferences is food appearance, for example, sausage product (Francis 1995). Typically, the food appearance inspection is performed by human judgments. In the sausage production, color is important quality parameters of sausage. Its color characteristic depends on the natural color of components used and must be uniform and homogeneous. It means that no unusual colors such as black or dark green are allowed and overall perception in color must be similar (Essien 2003). 

The model presented in Subramanian and Ravindran (2014) does not consider customer categories. In this chapter, two customer categories (low-end and high-end) are considered. It is assumed that only a proportion of low-end customers will buy the refurbished products based on their perceived value and price. The perceived value is modeled as a function of the quality perception for the low-end customer. The acceptance rate of high-end customers is modeled using a U-shaped function. 

Let rp be the price offered for refurbished products. As noted earlier, there are quality sensitive high-end customers and price-sensitive low-end customers. A low-end customer will buy the refurbished product only if his own utility is positive, that is, if the refurbished product price is less than or equal to his perceived value. Let q be the quality of the product and v q) be the perceived value for quality level q, where q and v q) are scaled between 0 and 1. Here, q = 0 implies that customers quality perception for the product is zero and v q) = 0. When q = I, v q) = 1, and customers value new and refurbished products the same. Figure 8.2 shows an example of the perceived value curve with respect to its product quality. 

What is the value of touch ( haptik ) in consumer quality perception ... 

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