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Effects of Product Beliefs on Product Perception and Liking

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Food, People and Society

Abstract

When consumers taste a food product in a real-life situation, their perception of the product is not only based on the sensory characteristics of the product per se. Product perception is often biased by preconceived ideas about product properties and is affected by the consumer’s judgmental frame of reference. If these preconceived ideas are concerned what the product is,they are called perceptual or analytical expectations or product beliefs. If these ideas relate to whether a consumer expects to like the product, they are called hedonic or affective expectations or product attitudes. Product beliefs and attitudes are stored in memory in the form of a network of associative knowledge, that is, a schema. When a market researcher inquires after a consumer’s product expectations, different pieces of information are retrieved as activation spreads through this network of linked nodes. The network will provide a coherent picture of the product under investigation, often referred to as the product image.

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Authors
  1. Hendrik N. J. Schifferstein
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwich Research Park, NR47UA, Colney, Norwich, UK

    Lynn J. Frewer (Consumer Science Section) (Consumer Science Section)

  2. Matforsk, Osloveien 1, N-1430, As, Norway

    Einar Risvik (Research Director) (Research Director)

  3. Department of Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 9, 2628 BX, Delft, The Netherlands

    Hendrik Schifferstein

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Schifferstein, H.N.J. (2001). Effects of Product Beliefs on Product Perception and Liking. In: Frewer, L.J., Risvik, E., Schifferstein, H. (eds) Food, People and Society. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04601-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04601-2_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-07477-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-04601-2

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