An Analysis of Consumers’ Internal Perception of Soup and Sauce using ZMET

There is a growing global interest in food choices that could affect health. Consumer food choices are dictated by numerous factors such as attitudes, beliefs, desires and preferences stemming from psychological and physiological attributes. The present study aimed to understand consumers’ internal perceptions about cream soup, cream sauce, and tomato sauce using ZMET (Zaltman’s Metaphor Elicitation Technique). The 9 step ZMET interview process was conducted for a sample of 36 consumers (12 consumers for each sauce). A content analysis of the survey results was carried out. From this, 56 concepts of cream soup were derived, and 15 constructs that met with the agreement of more than one-third of the total sample consumers were extracted. These 15 constructs included ‘Soft’, ‘Recollection’, ‘Familiar’, ‘Warm’, ‘Comfortable’, etc. Similarly, for cream sauce, 67 concepts and 20 constructs ‘Silky’, ‘Warm’, ‘Restaurant’, ‘Family’, ‘Memory’, etc. were deduced. A total of 66 concepts and 20 constructs for tomato sauce ‘Sourness’, ‘Sauce Bottle’, ‘Pleasant’, ‘Ingredient’, ‘Cooking’, etc. were derived. The analysis of consumers’ consensus maps through this study provides a deep and useful understanding of consumers and their latent needs. Also, the results of this study indicate that exploring consumers’ internal perceptions is critical to understanding their healthy food choices. This can be used as basic data for formulating marketing strategies.