Gastronomic identities: exploring cross-cultural plating's influence on consumer implicit and explicit responses

Area of Science:

• Gastronomy
• Consumer Behavior
• Cultural Identity

Background:

• Visual presentation significantly impacts food perception and cultural identity.
• Understanding consumer responses to visual cues is crucial for gastronomic identity construction.
• This study explores the interplay between dish familiarity, plating style, and consumer responses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of dish familiarity and plating style on Dutch young adults' responses.
• To compare explicit self-reports with implicit emotional and psychophysiological indices.
• To determine the predictive value of different measurement types on food liking.

Main Methods:

• Fifty-three Dutch young adults evaluated images of Dutch, Mexican, and Vietnamese dishes in home-like and chef-like plating styles.
• Data collected included physiological measures (electrodermal activity, heart rate), facial expressions, and self-reported liking, familiarity, valence, and arousal.
• ANOVA and multiple linear regression analyses were employed to analyze the data.

Main Results:

• Foreign dishes (Mexican Tacos, Vietnamese Bo Kho) were preferred over the Dutch dish (Hachee) in liking, valence, and arousal.
• Chef-like presentations generally received higher scores than home-like presentations.
• Self-reported measures were more reliable predictors of liking than physiological or expressive measures, despite some discrepancies between implicit and explicit responses.

Conclusions:

• Aesthetic presentation and dish type significantly influence consumer responses, while familiarity plays a lesser role.
• Self-reported liking is a more robust indicator of consumer preference than implicit physiological or expressive measures.
• Gastronomic identity is shaped by visual presentation and cultural context, with foreign culinary experiences often eliciting stronger positive responses.