EMPIRICAL STUDIES RELATED TO TFQ MODEL

Hedonic dimension
This dimension comprises both the sensory food quality dimension of Steenkamp, Wierenga,
and Meulenberg (1986) and the taste and appearance food dimension of Grunert et al. (1996).
The philosophy of hedonism argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and that the main
goal of the human existence is to maximize the pleasure. The hedonic quality dimension of food
include appearance, smell, and taste. Taste is one of the major criteria for evaluating food
products. Researchers claim that taste and pleasure are some of the most important predictors of
food choice (Roininen, Lhteenmki, & Tuorila, 1999).
In order to make food choice the consumer has to have expectations about the hedonic quality
of a food product. This is so, because the hedonic quality is an experience aspect of food and
taste especially can only be ascertained after eating.
Expectations can be formed on the base of available cues or information at the time of
purchase (Olson & Jacoby, 1972). For example, price, packaging, purchasing surroundings and
others are all cues that help consumers form expectations of taste. Or expectations can be based
on previous experience with the product or if the product is branded and the brand is known.
The following section will look at the formation of quality expectations in regard to the
hedonic dimension and how expectations are related to experience. The presented studies look
into how consumers use intrinsic and extrinsic quality cues in order to form expected quality
about a food product. One thing is clear in the food domain that quality dimensions and applied
quality cues are idiosyncratic to the product category investigated.
In order to make purchase decisions, consumers have to form quality expectations. They infer
quality through the use of cues. Expectations influence the hedonic evaluations of stimuli by
producing either contrast or assimilation (Zellner, Strickhouser, & Tornow, 2004). Contrast is the
shift in hedonic ratings of the stimulus in the direction counter to the expectation. Assimilation is
the shift in hedonic ratings of the stimulus in the direction of the expectation. Depending on a
number of factors including the strength and certainty of the participants expectations and the
social pressures that are present in the experimental setting, the participant will either experience
contrast or assimilation when rating the quality of food.

Researchers have concluded that consumers choose meat based on intrinsic experience and
search attributes like tenderness, leanness, juiciness, freshness, and the anticipated taste and
nutritional value, which are inferred from the visual appearance of a particular cut of meat
(Krystallis, Chryssochoidis, & Scholderer, 2007). The most important factors contributing to the
way consumers perceive quality at the point of purchase according to the appearance of the meat
are color, visible fat (Trijp & Steenkamp, 1996), and marbling (Bredahl, Grunert, & Fertin,
1998). Appearance of the product, however, does not bias the eating satisfaction. In particular,
color and packaging does not affect taste experience (Carpenter, Cornforth, & Whittier, 2001).
Visual intrinsic quality cues are of great importance to some consumers and they can have a
role similar to that of quality certification. When combined with the choice of particular retail
channels and the established personal relationship with the butcher, they can assist in decreasing
the risk in the purchasing decision (Krystallis, Chryssochoidis, & Scholderer, 2007).
Perceived fat and the place of purchase (butcher or supermarket) are identified as crucial
quality cues, and particularly butcher is the preferred product characteristic for beef meat
(Grunert, 1997). Fat is generally regarded as a sign of poor quality. In the same time, consumers
indicate tenderness, taste and juiciness to be one of the important quality dimensions when
evaluating beef. A certain degree of marbling, however, contributes to these quality
characteristics. This indicates that consumers have considerable difficulty in forming quality
expectations in a way that is predictive of later quality experience. This conclusion is also
relevant to the studies conducted by Bruns et al., (2005), Bredahl, Grunert, and Fertin (1998),
Baadsgaard et al. (1993), and Grunert, (2001). Fat does not predict the quality aspects the
consumer is interested in, although it is the major cue used to infer quality of meat. When they
expect good quality, bad quality will result, and vice versa.
Fattening-up has a significant effect on how respondents evaluate the appearance of the meat.
In general consumers evaluation of expected quality decreases with increasing fattening up,
mainly due to the stronger visual appearance of fat in the meat (Bruns et al., 2005).
Figure 12 illustrates how a sample of Danish consumers evaluated the quality of three types
of beef while looking at the raw meat (quality expectation), and after consumption (quality
experience) (Grunert, 2001). The three types of beef were from milk cows taken out of
production differing in that the animals were fattened 0, 2 or 4 months before slaughtering. It can
be clearly seen that the increased fat content in the meat, which is a consequence of the

additional fattening months, has a negative impact on consumers quality expectations when
looking at the raw meat, but increases the quality experience during consumption (Grunert,
2001). This means that the production system that includes breed, slaughter weight, and fattening
of the animals affect their meat characteristics.
Figure 12. Qualty perception of beef

Source: Grunert K., (2001)

Appearance as already implied, is poorly related to taste because their structural and
compositional origins are different (Dransfield, et al., 2005). In re-purchase, associations with
taste may dominate over appearance. In conclusion, consumers use of cues to infer quality are
quite misleading, which explains why consumers often experience a low degree of
correspondence between expected and experienced quality.
The smell of food has also an influence on the experienced quality of food. The perceived
smell can be influenced by other intrinsic quality cues, by aspects of the meal preparation
process or by certain technical product characteristics. In a study, pieces of pork were obtained
with three levels of Androstenone and Skatole flavour components, which are known to be
related to the smell that a certain percentage of uncastrated male pigs is known to emit during
cooking (Grunert et al., 1996). The results are quite interesting. First, the intrinsic quality cues
available at the time of purchase, namely color and fat content, do not have a significant
influence on the experience quality after preparation, which adds an interesting perspective to the
results from the study on quality perceptions of beef, where it was concluded that consumers
dysfunctionally use fat content and color as major intrinsic quality cues at the time of purchase.

Secondly, the smell, both during and after preparation, has an influence on experienced quality,
but this influence is minor compared to the major quality aspects taste and tenderness.
Freshness was found to be one of the main criteria for evaluating choice of food products
(Bernus, Olaizola, & Corcoran, 2003). Storage of meat is also a very important attribute for
consumers. This extrinsic characteristic is related to the freshness and hygiene of meat and,
therefore, is a major cue for expected and experience quality. Overall, this study suggests that
there are great differences in the appreciation of extrinsic attributes of red meat between
European regions. This result confirms the importance of cultural differences in studying quality
perceptions in meat, as suggested by Grunert (1997). Grunert makes an important suggestion on
studying the quality perception of food in accordance to cultural characteristics, since different
cultures show different patterns for perceiving food quality. The author implies also that quality
cues cross-refer to one another, e.g. cut and color cues are used to infer fat content; fat and cut
cues are used to infer costs. Further, consumers in low involvement situations and under high
degree of habitualization may not form quality expectations (Krystallis, Arvanitoyannis, &
Chryssohoidis, 2006). Although involvement in the meat selection process is very high, for a
specific part of the sample meat purchasing tends to be a habitual process based on low search
cost cues, such as good relation with the butcher or repeated selection of particular parts of the
animal.
A great importance is attached to buying meat from the butcher, which suggests that
consumers would rather trust an expert in the choice of meat than themselves, which additionally
increases the effect of uncertainty with regards to the formation of quality expectations (Grunert
K. G., 1997). Baadsgaard et al. (1993) has identified that the place of purchase is a major
extrinsic quality cue consumers use when evaluating the expected quality of a piece of beef. An
explanation for this relation is that buying meat at the butchers can substitute for a quality
assessment. Thus, consumers rely on extrinsic quality cues in situations of uncertainty, such as
consumers infer high quality meat products from the extrinsic quality cue butcher. This
conclusion supported also by Grunert (1997), is later confirmed by Grebitus and Bruhn (2008)
who investigate pork quality with the help of concept mapping. This method enables the
researcher to uncover relations between quality characteristics. The results show that consumers
prefer intrinsic quality cues to predict experience (eating) quality attributes. In contrast to that,
extrinsic quality cues are used to predict credence quality attributes.

Food packaging plays also essential role in attracting consumer attention and generating
sensory and hedonic expectations, which can affect their product perception and purchase
decisions. Both colour and shape of food affect consumers willingness to purchase (WTP).
Results of the study conducted by Ares and Deliza (2010) show the relevance of package
characteristics (in the case of the study milk desserts), such as colour and shape, in creating
sensory expectations on consumers, which could affect their product perception and acceptance.
Package color affected expected flavour and expected texture of the desserts. Besides,
participants also associated certain package shapes and colours with specific products, such as
egg custard or low-calorie desserts. Thus, during product and package development it would be
important to study which sensory expectations packages are able to create in consumers mind.
Sometimes, packaging of food (for example meat) are less important to consumers (Bernus,
Olaizola, & Corcoran, 2003). This attribute can be identified with convenience values. The fact
that consumers are used to buy unbranded and, frequently, unpackaged meat, in contrast to other
food products, can partially explain this phenomenon. Nevertheless, this situation is changing
rapidly and adequate packaging of meat could have increasing importance for convenienceorientated consumers in the future.
The influence of perceived origin on perceived intrinsic quality cues and expected eating
quality is worth mentioning. For example, Portuguese consumers of quality labelled beef
perceive the region of production as a signal of enhanced quality, leading to better intrinsic
attributes such as colour and fat, and consequently to higher expected beef eating quality
(Banovi, Grunert, Barreira, & Fontes, 2009). Country of origin has a significant impact on the
probability of choice of broiler meat (Pouta et al., 2010). Willingness-to-pay is substantially
reduced when a non-domestic product is offered. On the other hand, a well-known label
indicating local origin increased the superiority of the domestic origin. Origin, however, is not a
good indicator of safe and healthy/nutritious beef and lamb (Bernus, Olaizola, & Corcoran,
2003).
Specifically, the region of origin of food products affects consumer valuation in two different
ways (Stefani, Romano, & Cavicchi, 2006). First, origin can act as a quality cue hinting to other
characteristics of the good. Secondly, origin can affect directly the value of food due to its
symbolic or affective role. In the case of spelt (Stefani, Romano, & Cavicchi, 2006), the

narrower and more precisely defined the area of origin the higher the quality expectation of
consumers supporting the role of origin as a quality cue.
As to the purchase motives the study of Baadsgaard et al., (1993) on beef in England, France,
Germany and Spain identified the following ones:
Tradition and security beef can be used to cook traditional dishes, which contributes
towards a feeling of security
Variation in everyday life beef is extremely versatile; this not only enables it to be used in
many different kind of dishes and on different occasions, but also to provide variation in
everyday life
Nice atmosphere and social life suitable for family meals and guests
Health and nutrition beef is regarded as being healthy and nutritious
Expected satisfaction acceptable to family, children and guests
Demonstration of cooking abilities beef is good for proving both to yourself and others how
good cook you are.