What matters most: sensory attributes or nutrition claims? – a case study with functional pasta

This study assessed how intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect consumers’ acceptance and perception of a functional pasta. Ninety-three subjects participated in a home-use test using a full-profile conjoint approach with the following factors (and levels): moment of consumption (pre and post), nutrition claim (gluten-free, vegan and source of pro-vitamin A) and highlighted ingredient (rice flour and biofortified sweet potato flour). At the beginning, subjects answered an online questionnaire with the product concepts, rated the acceptance and answered two check-all-that-apply (CATA) questions, one with emojis and the other one with the statements of the Wellbeing Questionnaire (Ares, G., et. al., 2016). Afterwards, they took a package of pasta home to prepared it according to the given instructions, being free to choose the accompaniment. Then, they answered the online questionnaire again. Conjoint analysis was performed on the acceptance data as the dependent variable, in an additive model and Ordinary Least Squares procedure. CATA data were analyzed using correspondence analysis, and multiple factor analysis was finally performed to check for the relationship of acceptance and consumers’ perceptions. Results showed that the moment of consumption had the highest importance (43.8%), followed by claims (35.5%) and highlighted ingredient (20.7%). The levels “pre-consumption”, “pro-vitamin A” and “biofortified sweet potato flour” positively contributed to the acceptability. The concepts with higher acceptance were particularly related to “It helps me control my weight”, “It keeps me fit”, “It is good for wellbeing”, “It gives me pleasure”, “It keeps me healthy”, “It is nutritious”, “It is good for my health”, “It improves my mental performance”. As a conclusion, nutrition claims and ingredients statement on a functional food seem to be important to create positive expectations in a pre-consumption context, but a mismatch between sensory experience and expectation (including on sensory characteristics) could lower acceptance.