EMOCOFFEE HEDONIC SCALE IN THE EVALUATION OF COFFEE ACCEPTANCE

Coffee is a food that offers flavor and carries years of tradition and emotion, being consumed daily by numerous cultures. Its relevance makes it the focus of various studies; however, there is still a gap when it comes to understanding the emotions evoked by its consumption. To address this, EmoCoffee—a tool that combines terms, phrases, and images—was developed to better understand consumers' emotions during the act of drinking coffee, helping to reduce ambiguities in responses (Costa, 2024). Additionally, it includes a five-point hedonic scale whose terms were directly drawn from consumers' own vocabulary, making it more intuitive and representative of their experiences with the product. The present study aimed to compare the scale developed for EmoCoffee (EHEC) with traditional five- and nine-point hedonic scales (EH5P and EH9P, respectively). To this end, 136 coffee consumers evaluated formulations with different sucrose concentrations (0%, 10%, and 20%) using three hedonic scales: the traditional nine-point scale (EH9P), the traditional five-point scale (EH5P), and the EmoCoffee hedonic scale (EHEC). The results were evaluated through exploratory analyses, the Friedman test, the Wilcoxon test, and principal component analysis. Significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) were observed between scales of different lengths (EH5P × EH9P and EHEC × EH9P), especially in formulations F2 and F3. However, no significant differences were found between the scales of the same length (EH5P × EHEC). This suggests that the wording of the points has less influence than the scale length. Nevertheless, the choice of sensory scale should take into account not only statistical criteria but also clarity and consumer comfort. In an increasingly competitive Brazilian coffee market focused on specialty coffees, tools such as the EHEC scale are gaining relevance. By using language that is closer to the target audience, EHEC enables a more accurate evaluation of consumer acceptance, aligning with consumption trends and offering an innovative and effective approach to sensory analysis in the gourmet coffee industry. It is concluded that the EmoCoffee scale represents a promising alternative to EH5P, given its similar performance.