6533b82ffe1ef96bd1294e88

RESEARCH PRODUCT

"Pour moi, le goût du soja n'est pas une barrière à la consommation. Et pour vous ?" : Effet de la culture sur les croyances, attitudes et préférence vis-à-vis des produits à base de soja

subject

description

Understanding consumers' beliefs, attitudes and sensory preference is the key to a successful development and introduction of a new food. This thesis carried out a series of cross-cultural studies, France vs. Vietnam, on consumers' representation of soy foods and on sensory perception and preference of soy yogurts, a soy derived product recently developed for French market which does not exist on the Vietnamese market. Despite a favourable image of soy in terms of nutrition and health benefices, French participants reported that the barrier to its consumption was the taste of soy. This finding was confirmed by a consumer test in which French participants gave very low hedonic evaluations to soy yogurts. Interestingly, Vietnamese consumers, soy traditional consumers, did not appreciate these products as well. A series of mix yogurts in which cow milk was partially replaced by soy milk was formulated. Consumer tests showed that for both countries, a mix yogurt with proportion of soy milk lower than 50% received an average hedonic score higher than 5 on a scale going from 1 to 9. The role of the familiarity on food preference and the impact of cultural exposure on changing in beliefs and attitudes' change at adult age were confirmed. The present study contributes to the characterisation of the two cultures on their acceptability of a new food.