Understanding the Sensory Attributes Important to a Dark Chocolate Consumer

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Background

Dark chocolate became trendy in the consumer market

The Sensory group wanted provide usable guidance to Produce Developers if they ever pursued a dark chocolate product.

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Three Sensory Studies with Dark Chocolate Consumers

Focus Groups To understand which attributes we should be studying

Screening Design To determine the relative contributions of cocoa resin, cocoa intensity, and sweetness to overall liking and consumer expectations

Optimization Design To optimize both consumer expectation and liking of the two relevant attributes.

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Attributes identified from Dark Chocolate Focus Groups

Cocoa Resin

Cocoa Intensity

Sweetness

Color

Thickness

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Screening Design

Low High

Cocoa Resin MilkHershey’s Natural Unsweetened Cocoa

DarkHershey’s Special Dark

Cocoa

Cocoa

Intensity

Low2% cocoa

Moderate8% cocoa

Sweet

Intensity

Slight5% sucrose

Moderate10% sucrose

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Test Design

•100 consumers participated in the study

•Each participant tasted 5 of the 9 samples

•Samples were served in styrofoam cups with lids to disguise color

•Two ratings per sample:

– Rate the overall acceptability of this sample (9 point scale: 1=dislike extremely, 5=neither like nor dislike, 9=like extremely)

– Do you consider this sample dark chocolate? Yes or No (circle one)

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Results of Screening Design

If cocoa intensity high

• More people identified the sample as dark chocolate

• But, overall liking was lower

If sweetness was high

• Slightly higher percentage identified sample as dark chocolate

• Overall liking was higher

The choice of the different cocoas had no effect

• No effect on whether sample was called dark chocolate

• Overall liking did not change

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Sweet

Resin

ChocInt 6.8*

5.5 6.5

4.7 6.4*

5.4 6.6

4.8* 5.9*

•Center point scored best for liking/dark choc. expectation•Did not know whether high score was due to cocoa or sweet•Followed up with optimization design

Results of Screening Design

•At least 80% of panel

Identified sample as dark chocolate

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Optimization Design

5 samples with varying levels of cocoa and sweet

Used a blend of the two types of cocoas, since cocoa type was not a factor

Used response surface methodology for optimization

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region both OK neither OKonly overall only pctdrk

Optimized sample fit inside the original screening design and is

likely to be optimal balance between the liking/dark chocolate expectation.

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*Means that share a letter are not significantly different at the 95% confidence level.

Overall Liking

Dark

Chocolate

Creamy Milk

Chocolate

Among Dark chocolate lovers (n=50) 6.9 a 5.5 b

All Respondents (n=108) 5.8 a 5.5 a

Among Milk chocolate lovers (n=58) 4.8 b

5.6 a

Dark Chocolate Consumer Testing Results

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The End