What consumers say about food and what kind of words they use to do so offers direct insights into their perceptions, preferences, reasoning, and emotions.
This study explores evaluations of hybrid meat products of 2,405 consumers from England, Denmark, and Spain. As part of a large survey, consumers were prompted to note down four words that come to mind when they read a description of a hybrid meat product, and then again after they were involved in a hypothetical co-creation task of a hybrid meat product. 18,697 words and phrases of language material was processed using computational corpus-based analysis and manual classification into semantic categories including: Evaluation, Sensory, Production, Emotion, Diets, Quality, Ethics, and Other.
Consumers consider many dimensions when it comes to the evaluation of hybrid meat products including ethical conduct and sustainability. For all three languages, the number of positive words increased and the number of negative words decreased significantly (
The study reveals consumers’ vocabulary of hybrid meat products across the three countries and offers important insights for food producers to help them create innovative products that better align with consumers’ perceptions and expectations.