Development of consumer measures of trigeminal and visual attributes of food and personal products

This Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the development of objective and more appropriate sensory evaluation protocols and consumer tests for food and personal products as alternative tools to the traditional approach of scaling. The main thrust is to apply signal detection ranking techniques to consumer measurement. Hedonic and conceptual measurements were chosen. The particular hedonic measures chosen were temperature preferences for drinking hot coffee. The abstract consumer concept measurement chosen was 'appearance of refreshingness' for a personal product: toothpaste.; In the first study, temperature preference for drinking hot coffee was measured using an ad libitum mixing technique, which followed an initially performed hedonic ranking with R-index analysis. The chosen mean preferred temperature for drinking was around 60°C. Consumers were found to have a preferred range of temperatures that varied by 5--32°C.; In the second studies, the temperature of hot coffee before and during sipping of coffee was examined because preferred temperatures were above thermal pain and damage thresholds in the first study. It was found that the bolus of hot coffee does not remain in the mouth long enough to heat the epithelial surfaces sufficiently to cause pain or tissue damage.; The last chapter describes the measurement of a consumer concept for the second application of ranking with an R-index analysis. The consumer abstract concept chosen was refreshingness in regard to the appearance of toothpaste. It showed that the two ranking protocols: standard ranking and first choice ranking, were equivalent and interchangeable. It also indicated that consumer hedonic data correlated highly with refreshingness. A modification of ranking allowing ties gave results that corresponded with results from ranking not allowing ties. Transparent blue toothpaste was ranked as most refreshing and was significantly different from the others. Three shades of blue stripes and light green were ranked next most refreshing after the transparent blue. Grayish white, off white and ivory were least refreshing.