EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO DIFFERENT TYPES OF CAKES THROUGH VISUAL ASSESSMENT

Thinking of present gastronomic trends is inevitable when talking about innovation in haute pastry. Despite the rising demand for new creations, launching a successful product that meets the high expectations of consumers is increasingly complex. For this reason, sensory analysis studies are more and more interested in studying the emotions generated by these products, to understand and improve user experiences. The main goal of this work was to conduct an exploratory study to analyze the emotional arousal of consumers after the visualization of 5 special cakes. For data collection, an online questionnaire with EsSense Profile® scale and CATA methodology has been used. EsSense Profile® is a predefined and validated scale which measures emotions generated by food that includes 39 terms. When analyzing the emotions expressed by all the participants 22 are statistically significant, of which 14 are classified as positive, 6 as neutral and only 2 are negative. By analyzing the responses by gender, we observed differences in the number of attributes: women showed 18 significant attributes compared to 8 in the case of men. The results obtained support the importance of the emotional profile, in order to understand consumer’s expectations and behavior.