TY - JOUR

T1 - "Quality does not sell itself"

T2 - divergence between ‘objective’ product quality and preference for coffee in naïve consumers

AU - Giacalone, Davide

AU - Fosgaard, Toke Reinholt

AU - Steen, Ida

AU - Münchow, Morten

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - PurposeFood quality is a multidimensional concept comprising both objective and subjective components. Quality as defined from an industry perspective usually relies on different instrumental assessment and on ratings of ‘experts’ which may not necessarily align with consumers’ perception of quality. The present paper deals with consumers perceptions of intrinsic quality in coffee from a sensory scientific and behavioural economic perspective. Design/methodology/approachIn a blind taste test (N=205), naïve consumers tasted two cups of coffee and decided which they preferred. The two coffees varied greatly in their ‘objective’ quality (based on expert grading) and retail value. Consumers were then revealed that one of the cups contained a coffee that was much more expensive than the other, and that they could get a free cup of their preferred coffee if they could correctly identify the most expensive one. FindingsThe results showed that preferences were equally distributed among the high and low quality samples, and that consumers did not perform better than chance level in the identification task. These results suggest that current grading systems used in the industry may be poorly correlated with the way consumers actually experience coffee, and thus that quality inference in the marketplace is more likely influenced by external cues (e.g., brand, label and price) than to intrinsic product quality. Nevertheless, the results also show that consumers who correctly answered the identification task were also significantly more likely to prefer the high quality sample. This tentatively suggests that better sensory expertise is correlated with a preference for higher quality, though future studies are needed to confirm the correctedness of this interpretation. Originality/valueThis work highlights the difficulty of objectively defining food quality, and the limited usefulness of experts’ ratings widely used in the industry. Managerial implications of these findings, as well as implications for consumer policy, are discussed.

AB - PurposeFood quality is a multidimensional concept comprising both objective and subjective components. Quality as defined from an industry perspective usually relies on different instrumental assessment and on ratings of ‘experts’ which may not necessarily align with consumers’ perception of quality. The present paper deals with consumers perceptions of intrinsic quality in coffee from a sensory scientific and behavioural economic perspective. Design/methodology/approachIn a blind taste test (N=205), naïve consumers tasted two cups of coffee and decided which they preferred. The two coffees varied greatly in their ‘objective’ quality (based on expert grading) and retail value. Consumers were then revealed that one of the cups contained a coffee that was much more expensive than the other, and that they could get a free cup of their preferred coffee if they could correctly identify the most expensive one. FindingsThe results showed that preferences were equally distributed among the high and low quality samples, and that consumers did not perform better than chance level in the identification task. These results suggest that current grading systems used in the industry may be poorly correlated with the way consumers actually experience coffee, and thus that quality inference in the marketplace is more likely influenced by external cues (e.g., brand, label and price) than to intrinsic product quality. Nevertheless, the results also show that consumers who correctly answered the identification task were also significantly more likely to prefer the high quality sample. This tentatively suggests that better sensory expertise is correlated with a preference for higher quality, though future studies are needed to confirm the correctedness of this interpretation. Originality/valueThis work highlights the difficulty of objectively defining food quality, and the limited usefulness of experts’ ratings widely used in the industry. Managerial implications of these findings, as well as implications for consumer policy, are discussed.

U2 - 10.1108/BFJ-03-2016-0127

DO - 10.1108/BFJ-03-2016-0127

M3 - Journal article

VL - 118

SP - 2462

EP - 2474

JO - British Food Journal

JF - British Food Journal

SN - 0007-070X

IS - 10

ER -