FOOD QUALITY AND

CONSUMER EXPECTATION
MSc- Food Processing and Preservation- Part II
Subject- Food Psychology
Presented by - Shrutika Nalawade
Roll No- 11
Index
1. What is Quality?
2. Types of Quality
3. Food Quality
4. Consumer Perception of Food quality
5. Total Food Quality Model
6. Ideational influences
7. The Role of Expectations
8. Formation of quality expectations
9. References
 What is Quality? An arbitrary term.

• It is the combination of attributes or characteristics of a product that have significance in

determining the degree of acceptability of the product to a user.(1)
• Features of products which meet customer needs - provide customer satisfaction.
• Freedom from deficiencies – conformance to specifications, design, expectation.
• Feigenbaum defines quality as :
• Product and service quality can be defined as: The total composite product and service
characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and maintenance through which the
product and service in use will meet the expectations of the customer - A. V. Feigenbaum.
 Types of Quality: (1)

• Product-oriented quality
• Process-oriented quality.
• Quality control.
• Consumer-oriented quality.
Objective Quality : Subjective Quality :

• Product-oriented quality Consumer-oriented quality.

• Process-oriented quality.
• Quality control.

• Consumer-oriented quality is affected by all three types of objective

quality.

• The amount a consumer is willing to pay for a product depends on this

subjectively perceived quality, which is related to, but not the same as,
objective quality. (2)
 Food Quality (3)
• Quality of foods includes the characteristics that are significant for the selection and
acceptability of products by the consumers.

• Defined as the composite of those characteristics being significant in determining the

degree of consumer acceptability” (Gould and Gould, 2001).

• Defined as “degree of excellence” (Kramer and Twigg, 1970).

• “Many factors with sensory quality, consisting of appearance, color, texture, taste, odor,
flavor, etc. being significantly important” (Singhal et al., 1997).
Food Quality (3)
Different meanings to different people.

Food Quality- A Relative concept and it Relativity to consumers.

1. H. Clarke put forth that food quality is a relative concept that is inappropriate for
evaluation by anyone other than the average consumer of that food.
2. It is a concept that is relative to person, place and time.
3. “Those to whom an article is truly acceptable, are those who cannot get anything
at all so good at all “(Clarke, 1870).
Refocusing of the definition of food quality in terms of
Consumer Perception and Acceptance. (2)

• During the past 20 years the field of food science (and sensory evaluation) recognized
that, whether taken individually or together, nutritional quality, microbiological quality,
chemical stability, expert opinion, etc. are inadequate measures of what the consuming
public views as food quality.
 Consumer Perception of Food Quality(2)
It is multidimensional.ie quality is perceived by combining a number of quality dimensions or
attributes of the product.
• Search attributes can be identified from the outside and as such the attributes are apparent to
the user at the moment at which a product is chosen.
• Experience attributes are not directly assessable at the moment of choosing a product but
after purchasing the product (e.g. taste, etc.).
• Credence attributes are not assessable when the product is purchased or consumed but are
attributes that the user believes are present because this is stated by a source of information
considered to be credible.

The distinction between search, experience and credence characteristics,are important elements
Total Food Quality Model for analysing the quality perception process for food products.
Total Food Quality Model (4)
 Originally proposed by Grunert, Larsen and Madsen and Baadsgaard (1995).

It integrates two other major elements of consumer behaviour theory, namely the
explanation of intention to purchase and the explanation of consumer satisfaction,
as the discrepancy between expected and experienced quality.
Source :Karen brunsø, Thomas Fjord,Klaus g. Grunert. Consumers’ Food Choice and Quality
Perception. Page no- 7- 21
• The way consumers use quality cues to infer expected quality can be quite intricate and, at first
sight, sometimes appear to be quite irrational. (4)

• According to the Total Food Quality Model, quality is not an aim in itself, but is desired because it
helps satisfy purchase motives or values. (4)

• The values sought by consumers will, in turn, have an impact on which quality dimensions are
sought and how different cues are perceived and evaluated. (4)

• Expected quality and expected fulfilment of the purchase motive constitute the positive
consequences consumers expect from buying a food product and are offset against the negative
consequences in the form of various (mostly monetary) costs. (4)
• The Experienced quality is influenced by many factors. (4)

• The way the product has been prepared, situational factors such as time of day and type of meal,
the consumer’s mood, previous experience, etc.These are known as contextual influences. (4)

• Expectation itself may also be an important variable in determining the experienced quality of
the product . (3)

• Past experience with the food item or its source can have an important influence on the
consumer’s judgment of the quality of that food. (3)
Ideational influences (3)
Results from mere exposure to information about the food. Such information might
be factual
• e.g: price or nutrition content, but may also be opinion or hearsay about the sensory
and other quality aspects ofthe food.

Both actual experience with foods and ideational information about foods can create
beliefs about the likely or expected quality/acceptability of foods.
The Role of Expectations (4)
• The role of Expectations can be uderstood through assimilation model.This model suggest that
ratings of the sensory and hedonic properties of food are influenced in the direction of the level of
expectation.

• If one leads consumers to believe that they will consume a coffee with either standard bitterness or
with no bitterness, they will rate coffee that is expected to have standard bitterness as being more
bitter than the same coffee when it is expected to have no bitterness .

• It appears that where direct experience is lacking, the level of expected quality/acceptability is
determined on the basis of information previously obtained through mass media communications or
other informational sources.
Formation of quality expectations: An example of beef (4)
In order to determine how consumers use intrinsic and extrinsic cues to form expectations about beef
quality, data were collected in four countries: France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Consumers evaluated product descriptions constructed from a factorial design of intrinsic and extrinsic
quality cues.
Intrinsic quality cues
• cut: steak, roast, cubed, minced
• colour: light red, medium red, dark red for roast and steak; lighter red and darker red for cubed
and minced
• fat lumps: major, minor (for steak, roast, and cubed only)
• fat rim: yes, no (for steak and roast only)
• marbling: high, low (for steak and roast only)
• fat content: high, low (for minced only)
Extrinsic quality cues
• Price: low, medium, high
• Origin: no information, Denmark, Ireland (in the UK: Scotland)
• Information on animal production: no information, information ‘this meat is from animals bred and fed with
due consideration to animal welfare and without artificial hormones and additives’ . (4)

The focus groups indicated that the most important quality dimensions when evaluating beef were taste,
tenderness, juiciness, freshness, leanness, healthiness and nutrition.
For each product description (combination of photograph and extrinsic product information), the respondent
rated perceived colour of the meat (four levels), perceived fat content (three levels), and perceived value for
money (three levels).
Two factors appear to dominate the formation of expected quality: perceived fat and the place of purchase.
This indicates considerable uncertainty on the
part of consumers with regard to the formation of quality expectations.
 Thus, the formation of expectations about taste, tenderness and juiciness mainly based on fat attributes is
actually dysfunctional. (4)
Conclusion :
• Expectations play an important role in the consumer’s judgment of food.
• As for the role of consumer expectations in food quality, one prominent industry
researcher best captured it by defining quality as ‘consistent conformance to
consumer expectations.
• Food quality cannot ‘be directly equated with the construct of acceptance’alone.
• Rather, food quality is the objectively estimated overall effect of the material
(‘sensory ’ and somatic) and symbolic (‘ideational’) attributes of the food and the
situa- tion on its actual or symbolic acceptance, as that integrated effect varies
among consumers and common situations of use.
References
1.Quality assurance for the food industry. A practical approach. J. Andares Vasconcellos . Page 21-25.

2.Armand v Cardello. Food Quality: Relativity, Context and Consumer expectation .Food quality and
prefnnce6 (1995) 163-170.

3.Karen brunsø, Thomas Fjord,Klaus g. Grunert. Consumers’ Food Choice and Quality Perception.
Page no- 7- 21.

4.Armand v. Cardello. Consumer expectations and their role in food acceptance. Measurement of food
preferences chapter. January 1994.
THANKOU