6533b821fe1ef96bd127b542

RESEARCH PRODUCT

What do we learn from comparing hedonic scores and willingness to pay data? [O8.2]

subject

description

Hedonic measurements are generally conducted in a blind condition and thus evaluate consumer reactions to the sensory characteristics of the products whereas auctions are generally conducted to determine consumer valuation of extrinsic characteristics. In the last 10 years these two approaches were combined to reveal consumer preferences. Thus, tasting was introduced in the auction procedures. However, only two papers reported a comparison of these two approaches (Lange et al., 2002 with a between-subject design and Noussair et al., 2004 with a within-subject design). The aim of this paper is to present such a comparison on four data sets collected in our laboratory for different food products (bread, cooked ham, cheese and orange juice). This comparison will be conducted on four different points: 1) agreement between rankings of the product variants 2) similarity of the discrimination level 3) similarity of individual coefficients of variation between variants 4) effects of participant characteristics such as gender, age, income, and education. For the four data sets, the hedonic scores and willingness to pay were collected for each participant in a ‘full’ information condition i.e. in a condition where participants tasted each variant associated with extrinsic information. The mechanism used to reveal consumer willingness to pay was the BDM mechanism (Becker, DeGroot, & Marschak, 1964), consisting in real sales at a random price. In conclusion, we will discuss the specificities of the two approaches which could affect consumer responses and we will underline the complementary of these two approaches to reveal consumer preferences.