Consumer testing of goods and services often requires appropriate subject

sampling/screening for several demographic categories, such as age, gender, product

usage, income, geographic location, nationality, race, religion, and education.; [i]
tTypically, as demographic subject requirements become increasingly stringent,

Comment [AP1]: Use of the semicolon. Chicago

6.54. Fixed.

recruiting costs increase as well. [ii] If consumer differences within each demographic
category were well understood, researchers could better determine the influence of

Comment [AP2]: Could you explain how the cost

of recruiting is related to your argument about
demographic categories? How does this sentence
relate to your general argument?

demographic differentiation when designing their studies. Three standard demographic

requirements in sensory analysis are gender, age, and product usage; the current
knowledge regarding the influence of each of these demographic categories in sensory
analysis/food evaluation is described in the following paragraphs.
Gender
Gender has been found to influence liking, attitude, affective response, choice, and
perception toward food. Regarding childrens food habits and preferences, studies found
that boys snack more than girls do, as girls are more concerned with their diet. [iii]
Another study found that with respect to pure fruits and vegetables, girls yield higher
affective responses, while boys tend to rate those products higher when sugar is added.
[iv] When evaluating cake products, men gave higher liking scores than women; [v] it
would thus seem that both boys and men have tendencies to rate sweeter foods higher,
perhaps due to girls and women paying more attention to whether the product is healthy
or not. However, although women have been found to rate healthy meals higher than
males regarding pleasure and convenience, [vi] in comparing comfort foods, men
generally favor hot meals (steak, casserole, soup, etc.), while women generally favor

Formatted: Emphasis, Font: Times New

Roman, Font color: Auto

Comment [AP3]: Dangling modifier. Fixed.

Comment [AP4]: See comment 7. This sentence
seems to contradict itself later in the paragraph.

Comment [AP5]: This perhaps is an important

qualifier, but it seems to contradict your earlier
statement that boys snack more because girls are
concerned with their diet. Is there a way to
reconcile these two sentences? Do the studies
disagree?

snack foods (chocolate, ice cream, etc.). [vii] It has been shown that women are more
likely to have foods rejections, [viii] and yet seem to be more willing than men to try new
or novel foods. [ix] One study suggested that gender difference may be due to women
focusing more on their senses and the actual sensation they experience, while men may
be focusing more on any cognitive information they receive about the product. [x]
From these studies, it is evident there are definite differences between males and
females when it comes to food preferences. However, the variety of product categories
researched in many of these studies were limited; research regarding gender differences
across a wide variety of product categories would therefore be a useful contribution to
the current literature.

Comment [AP6]: Plural intentional?

Comment [AP7]: This is a generalization that

could be improved in the context of your piece.
Revision okay?
Comment [AP8]: Can you explain what they
were limited to?

Age

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Roman, Font color: Auto

In certain studies, Aage has also been found to influence the liking, acceptance,
preference, or perception of food. Conversely, other studies found that age had no effect
of age on the memory, hedonic response, or liking of food. These contradictions may be
due to differences in each study regarding the variation in age categories and products

Comment [AP9]: Revision makes it clear that

this is a supplemental paragraph to the above and
that there are differing perspectives on age.

tested. Much of the current literature for either argument compares either adolescents
to adults, or young adults to the elderly, demonstrating a lack of research comparing
middle-age categories to the young and elderly. However, two studies did examine the
influence of age on food liking and acceptance with age categories spanning ranging
from 20 year-olds to over 70 year-olds. [v, xi] One of these studies found that
participants 61 years and older tended to give higher liking ratings to jam-filled cakes,
demonstrating more usage of the higher end of the hedonic scale than other age
categories. [v] The Another study found that the younger age group (age 20-35) and two
olderst age groups(age 61-70 and over 70) age groups tended to give higher acceptance
ratings to vegetable soups than the other age categories in between, suggesting that
younger and older participants awere more willing to accept the product than middleaged participants. [xi] Both of these studies examined very specific product categories.
Consequently, it would be useful to examine a wide range of age categories in
conjunction with a wide range of product categories.
Product Usage

Comment [AP10]: Do these categories have

numerical quantities? If so, including them might
help your reader keep the terminology straight.
Comment [AP11]: Did the study span 20 years,
or were the participants 20-year-olds? Revision
okay?
Comment [AP12]: Can you give a brief
definition or example of what it means to be at the
high end of the hedonic scale? A few words would
suffice.
Comment [AP13]: Saying the other makes it
sound like there were only two conclusive studies.
Revised.
Comment [AP14]: shift: tense. Revised.

Comment [AP15]: Can you expand this or give a

concrete example?
Formatted: Emphasis, Font: Times New
Roman, Font color: Auto

Often, participants are recruited for consumer tests based on their frequency of product
use; [ii] however, even if all participants are likers, do frequent product users score
product liking or acceptance differently than infrequent or non-users? According to one
study, [xii] it is possible that frequent users may experience boredom and monotony due
to repeat product exposure, thereby decreasing hedonic ratings; [xiii, xiv] on the other
hand, non-users may experience neophobia, a condition in which consumption of
novel foods is avoided, [viii] perhaps decreasing hedonic ratings due to unfamiliarity.
Some researchers suggested that while repeat product exposure may decrease hedonic
ratings for familiar foods, repeat exposure to novel foods may increase hedonic ratings.
[xv, xvi] However, another study found no changes in liking scores for apple juice after
repeated exposure. [xvii]

Comment [AP16]: Dangling modifier. The tests

are based on their frequency of use or their
recruitment is based on the frequency of use?

Comment [AP17]: Appositive, Chicago 5.21.

Fixed.

Although repeat product exposure is related to frequency of product use, there are
discrepancies between these concepts; for example, one study found that in comparing
light vs. heavy soup users, although hedonic ratings shifted lower overall with repeat
exposure, there were no differences between the light frequent and heavyinfrequent
users. [xiv] Another study found that, in general, consumption frequencies could not be
used to predict consumer liking for a soup product. [xi] Yet, a study using jam-filled
cakes found higher consumption frequency was associated with higher liking scores. [v]
Like gender and age, frequency of product use and its effect on liking and /acceptance
may be product category dependent, along with past product experience and when it
was last consumed. [xviii, xix]

Upon Based on my investigation of the literature, I am designing a study to fill in some

of the knowledge gaps regarding this topic by testing consumer overall acceptance
scoring of several food product categories, accounting for variants of age, gender, and
product usage. I hypothesize that the influence of gender on overall acceptance scores
will be product category dependent, that, across a wide variety of product categories, age
will not significantly affect overall acceptance scores across a wide variety of product
categories, and that the effect of product usage on overall acceptance scores will be
product category dependent.

Works Cited
[i] MEILGAARD, M.C., CIVILLE, G.V. and CARR, B.T. 2007. Sensory evaluation
techniques, CRC press.
[ii] MCDERMOTT, B. 1990. Identifying consumers and consumer test subjects. Food
technology (USA).
[iii] NU, C.T., MACLEOD, P. and BARTHELEMY, J. 1996. Effects of age and gender on
adolescents' food habits and preferences. Food. Qual. Prefer. 7, 251-262.

Comment [AP18]: Differences in the users or

differences in preference? The structure of the
sentence makes this ambiguous.
Comment [AP19]: repeated wording here of
"light and heavy soup" and "light and heavy users" is
a bit confusing. Does this change to frequent and
infrequent users work?
Comment [AP20]: If these are a single category,
then the slash works well. If these are two alternate
categories, however, the "and" is necessary for
clarity.
Comment [AP21]: Could you define this term
briefly? Its important terminology for your
conclusion so it would be helpful to have a
definition that would be widely understood.
Comment [AP22]: Shift in tense. Fixed.

[iv] MIELBY, L.H., NRGAARD, M.K., EDELENBOS, M. and THYBO, A. 2012.

Affective Response of Adolescents toward Fruitand VegetableBased Snacks and the
Role of Neophobia, Gender and Age. Journal of Sensory Studies 27, 425-438.
[v] MichonICHON, C., OSULLIVAN, M., SHEEHAN, E., DELAHUNTY, C. and KERRY,
J. 2010a. Investigation of the influence of age, gender and consumption habits on the
liking of jam-filled cakes. Food. Qual. Prefer. 21, 553-561.
[vi] RAPPOPORT, L., PETERS, G.R., DOWNEY, R., MCCANN, T. and HUFF-CORZINE,
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[vii] WANSINK, B., CHENEY, M.M. and CHAN, N. 2003. Exploring comfort food
preferences across age and gender. Physiology & Behavior 79, 739-747.
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differences in factors affecting rejection of food in healthy young Swedish adults.
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[ix] BEARDSWORTH, A., BRYMAN, A., KEIL, T., GOODE, J., HASLAM, C. and
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[x] SCHIFFERSTEIN, H.N. 2006. The perceived importance of sensory modalities in
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[xi] MICHON, C., OSULLIVAN, M., SHEEHAN, E., DELAHUNTY, C. and KERRY, J.
2010b. Study on the influence of age, gender and familiarity with the product on the
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[xii] DALENBERG, J.R., NANETTI, L., RENKEN, R.J., DE WIJK, R.A. and TER
HORST, G.J. 2014. Dealing with Consumer Differences in Liking during Repeated
Exposure to Food; Typical Dynamics in Rating Behavior. PLoS One 9.
[xiii] RAYNOR, H.A. and WING, R.R. 2006. Effect of limiting snack food variety across
days on hedonics and consumption. Appetite 46, 168-176.

[xiv] ZANDSTRA, E.H., WEEGELS, M.F., VAN SPRONSEN, A.A. and KLERK, M. 2004.
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[xv] STEIN, L.J., NAGAI, H., NAKAGAWA, M. and BEAUCHAMP, G.K. 2003. Effects of
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[xvi] WEIJZEN, P.L., ZANDSTRA, E., ALFIERI, C. and DE GRAAF, C. 2008. Effects of
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[xvii] STOLZENBACH, S., BREDIE, W.L.P., CHRISTENSEN, R.H.B. and BYRNE, D.V.
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[xviii] HETHERINGTON, M.M., BELL, A. and ROLLS, B.J. 2000. Effects of repeat
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