5.1.2 Product judging criteria

Product judging criteria during the buying and use of the product are important; for example for bread, they may be judging on: colour of the crust, shape of loaf, fibre content and price.

When a person is faced with a food, they perceive its physical and social attributes through the senses of sight, feel, smell, hearing and taste. These in turn arouse the central control unit (the brain) to make a comparison between the perceived sensory properties and the acceptable criteria for the food based on personal preferences and past experience.

The result of this comparison is acceptance or rejection of the product. This can occur at any stage of the food behaviour process. The product may be rejected at the search stage, because it does not fit the cultural pattern, someone in the household dislikes it, or it does not suit the eating occasion. It can be rejected during the buying stage because of the pack appearance, the nutritional information, the price, or because the product appears soft to touch, has an unpleasant odour. Similar judgements will take place throughout the preparation, cooking and eating stages.

The level of involvement that a consumer has with a product varies with product and environment. Involvement has several facets: perceived importance of product and buying/eating situation, perceived symbolic or sign value, perceived pleasure value and perceived risk (Laurent and Kapferer, 1985).

Consumers' product knowledge is based on a chain (Peter and Olson, 1999):

product attributes

functional consequences

psychosocial consequences

values

Some attributes are related to strong core values of the person; others are unimportant and get little response from the consumer. Consumers can believe that product attributes are strongly related to their goals or values, for example that diet foods will help them to achieve their goal of losing weight, and therefore they feel strongly about the low-calorie attributes of the product.

Values include instrumental values, the preferred modes of conduct, and terminal values, the preferred states of being. Consumers also recognise functional product attributes, which are important but not related strongly to either their goals or values; for example that dried soup powders mix easily with water.

Finally there may be product attributes that are of no importance to them and these attributes will not gain their interest in the product. These three levels of attribute involvement by the consumer can occur in one product, and lead to the hierarchy of attributes used in product design. The consumers' product knowledge can recognise a number of product attributes, a number of product benefits and also their value satisfaction from the product.