Consumer Acceptability, Eye Fixation, and Physiological Responses: A Study of Novel and Familiar Chocolate Packaging Designs Using Eye-Tracking Devices

Abstract

Eye fixations on packaging elements are not necessarily correlated to consumer attention or positive emotions towards those elements. This study aimed to assess links between the emotional responses of consumers and the eye fixations on areas of interest (AOI) of different chocolate packaging designs using eye trackers. Sixty participants were exposed to six novel and six familiar (commercial) chocolate packaging concepts on tablet PC screens. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate analysis were performed on eye tracking, facial expressions, and self-reported responses. The results showed that there were significant positive correlations between liking and familiarity in commercially available concepts (r = 0.88), whereas, with novel concepts, there were no significant correlations. Overall, the total number of fixations on the familiar packaging was positively correlated (r = 0.78) with positive emotions elicited in people using the FaceReader™ (Happy), while they were not correlated with any emotion for the novel packaging. Fixations on a specific AOI were not linked to positive emotions, since, in some cases, they were related to negative emotions elicited in people or not even associated with any emotion. These findings can be used by package designers to better understand the link between the emotional responses of consumers and their eye fixation patterns for specific AOI.

Coffee Label Assessment Using Sensory and Biometric Analysis of Self-Isolating Panelists through Videoconference

“…In the case of the correlations among the self-reported and subconscious responses (Figure 2b), it was found that consumers rate labels as higher quality when they perceive coffee as higher strength, when labels are more pleasant, and when they elicit more positive emotions; the latter is consistent with findings from Gunaratne et al [2] for chocolate label assessment. Furthermore, the willingness to purchase is directly influenced by the perceived quality, as found in other research [33].…”

“…Following the results from the emotional and emoji responses, the premium label was highlighted with statistically higher areas of interest selection, such as colors, layout, and pattern/texture, with layout being the highest area of interest for the natural concept and color for the bold concept (Table 6). However, analysis of features was limited in this study; more specific assessments can be conducting when analyzing label features using eye-trackers [2,3,[27][28][29] or more practically for virtual sensory sessions when using digital tools (from video analysis) for eye tracking to assess fixation number and duration that the panelists spend at each component [30,31]. The DAFW group has developed algorithms to analyze eye-tracking parameters and the emotional response based on facial expressions from the different features of labels [32].…”

“…Packaging and the information presented on labels are the first points of contact between products and consumers, especially for new products and those unfamiliar to consumers. Therefore, packaging and labels play a significant role in determining preference, liking, and purchase intention [1,2]. Sensory analysis of packaging, labels, and label information is the easiest assessment that can be conducted in social isolation and when products are not as physically available for other sensory assessments.…”

Non-Invasive Biometrics and Machine Learning Modeling to Obtain Sensory and Emotional Responses from Panelists during Entomophagy

“…Due to the influence of emotions in decision-making, especially for new food products and even food packaging for consumer acceptability [ 15 , 16 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ], it is important to assess how insect-based food products make consumers feel, besides studying only their acceptability. Therefore, some studies have been conducted to evaluate emotional responses towards foods with insects [ 22 ], specifically focused on disgust [ 23 , 24 ].…”

The State of Automated Facial Expression Analysis (AFEA) in Evaluating Consumer Packaged Beverages

“…Researchers noted that while simple elements and sharp edges showed higher attention and valence, higher valence was observed for pictorial images as opposed to computer-generated images [64]. A study on chocolate packaging did not find any significant differences in AFEA data for the experimental package images [65].…”