Consumer perceptions of food and beverage flavour

This chapter is concerned specifically with the perceptions of consumers. Much of the sensory study of flavours, though, has been undertaken using trained panellists, whose training is aimed precisely at producing individuals who respond to sensory qualities in an analytical, non-hedonic, and highly sensitive manner (Prescott et al., 2014). In other words, they are meant to respond entirely unlike the typical consumer. The results of descriptive analyses undertaken by trained panellists have been invaluable in providing insights into the sensory properties of foods and other consumer goods. In particular, panellists who are well trained tend to produce data that are reliable and reproducible. Again, this is in contrast to consumers whose data tend to be highly variable, both within (for example, over time) and between individuals. These distinctions are sometimes described as contrasting objective with subjective data, with the implication that the former is intrinsically more desirable for understanding product perceptions.