Do individual differences in visual attention to CATA questions affect sensory product characterization? A case study with plain crackers

- Individual differences in visual attention to CATA questions were identified.
- Patterns of visual attention translated to differences in sensory product characterization.
- A superficial evaluation of the CATA question was associated with less sample discrimination.

CATA questions are gaining prominence as a quick and easy method for obtaining consumer-derived sensory product characterizations. The present research contributes further methodological understanding by exploring individual differences in visual attention to CATA questions and investigating the relationship between visual attention throughout the task and consumers' ability to discriminate among samples. A consumer study was carried out in which 113 participants were asked to evaluate six plain crackers and to answer a check-all-that-apply question composed of 20 sensory terms, which was presented on a computer screen. While consumers completed the CATA tasks their eye movements were recorded using a remote eye-tracker. Considerable heterogeneity among participants existed with regard to the number of fixations made when completing the CATA questions. Three groups of consumers who differed in their degree of visual processing (more thorough to less thorough) were identified. These groups also differed in their responses to the CATA question. Consumers who performed the most thorough visual processing of the CATA question, used, on average, a significantly larger number of CATA terms to describe the products than consumers in the other two groups. Meanwhile, consumers who engaged in the least detailed visual processing showed lesser discriminative ability. However, sensory spaces from the three consumer groups were highly similar, suggesting that consumers identified the same similarities and differences among samples despite differing in the degree of visual attention directed to the CATA question.