A STUDY OF CHINESE‐ORIGIN AND EUROPEAN‐ORIGIN AUSTRALIAN CONSUMERS’ TEXTURE PREFERENCES USING A NOVEL EXTRUDED PRODUCT

Diverse food choices and preferences are commonly observed between consumers cross-culturally, however, many aspects of these behavioral differences are not yet fully understood. In order to investigate cross-cultural texture preferences, six extruded snack samples, manufactured under different processing conditions to represent a range of textural characteristics were characterized by a trained panel using descriptive sensory analysis. In parallel, thirty-eight naive European-Origin and thirty-seven naive Chinese-Origin Australian consumers (t = 75) rated their preference for the snacks. The snacks were not representative of any snacks on the market and thus represented a “ novel” product in both cultures. Additionally, consumers answered a simple questionnaire and completed the food neophobia scale. Results of descriptive analysis indicated significant differences (p≤0.01) between the samples for 13 out of 15 descriptive attributes but no significant differences in preference were found between European-origin and Chinese-origin consumers. However, overall analysis of mean effects indicated that Chinese-origin consumers rated samples significantly higher than European-origin consumers (p≤0.05), suggesting a cultural bias in the use of line scales. Gender did not influence texture preference, however, age significantly influenced preference for three of the samples (p≤0.05) and analysis of mean effects also indicated differences in consumers’ ratings which were related to age. Food neophobia classification did not influence preference, although many more Chinese-origin consumers (28) were classified as neophobic than were European-origin consumers (11).