DESCRIPTION OF CHEDDAR CHEESE PACKAGING ATTRIBUTES USING AN AGREED VOCABULARY

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Abstract
Many factors contribute to the total perception of a food product. The visual packaging attributes of products can be considered important by contributing to their “ on the shelf” presentation which predisposes consumers to purchase. Such extrinsic product packaging attributes can be considered appearance stimuli and thus differ from the intrinsic sensory attributes of a product only in that the packaging attributes are judged by sight and not using the other senses of mouthfeel, olfaction and gustation during consumption. A new approach to measuring product packaging attributes could be to use descriptive sensory analysis. In order to attempt this, 15 assessors, trained in descriptive analysis procedures generated individual vocabularies to describe Cheddar cheeses’ packaging attributes using the repertory grid method. Vocabulary development sessions were subsequently carried out, during which assessors agreed on a vocabulary of 20 defined packaging attributes. The packaging of 8 Cheddar cheeses was then evaluated using standard descriptive analysis procedures. Analysis of Variance found all attributes to discriminate between the eight cheeses (p<0.01) and Principal Components Analysis allowed the relationships between cheeses and packaging attributes to be viewed. The analysis also indicated that assessors agreed with each other on the meaning of the packaging attributes and could reproduce their evaluations. Limitations in the use of this method were also considered, particularly in relation to scaling of some of the attributes, and the potential subjectivity of others. Despite this, the study showed it was possible to apply descriptive techniques to describe the packaging attributes of Cheddar cheese.