E.P. Köster

The role of novelty detection in food memory

Memory plays a central role in food choice. Recent studies focusing on food memory in everyday eating and drinking behaviour used a paradigm based on incidental learning of target foods and unexpected memory testing, demanding recognition of the target among distractors, which deviate slightly from the target. Results question the traditional view of memory as reactivation of previous experiences. Comparison of data from several experiments shows that in incidentally learned memory, distractors are rejected, while original targets are not recognised better than by chance guessing. Food memory is tuned at detecting novelty and change, rather than at recognising a previously encountered food.

Complexity of Consumer Perception

Abstract The complexity of consumer perception of food products is still underestimated. Simply determining a products averaged pleasantness in a single test may not be the best way to predict the products future in the market. Not only is there a multitude of aspects and their mutual interactions that come into play, but the relationship between the consumer and the product also changes over repeated exposure, and these changes often determine the duration of the products life cycle in the market. Predicting these changes over repeated exposure is probably more important than the momentary appreciation of the product on which most market research is based nowadays. The role of “collative properties,” like perceived complexity, in the development of liking over exposure is discussed, and methods for predicting these changes and for the introduction of the product into the market are described. The effects of these methods on the possibility of producing more durable products are indicated.