Assessing consumer expectations about pizza: A study on celiac and non-celiac individuals using the word association technique

•Nonceliac and celiac people perceptions about pizza.•Raw material was less important for both groups.•Thick pizza dough is preferred for pizza manufacture.

The word association (WA) technique was used to investigate the perception of two groups of consumers (72 celiac and 78 non-celiac individuals; 150 in total) to pizza dough (thick or thin) and the raw material used at the manufacture (cassava flour or rice flour). Different perceptions of the four stimuli were detected by Chi-square test (X2 = 314.393, p < 0.0001) for both groups. Seven categories were used for both groups: food/composition, health, doubt/uncertainty, novelty, negative feelings, positive feelings, and sensory aspects. The stimulus 'pizza dough made with cassava flour' was associated with the category “food/composition” and the stimuli 'pizza made with rice flour', 'pizza made with cassava flour' and 'thin dough' were associated with “positive feelings”. The stimulus 'thick dough' was related only to the category “negative feelings”. WA indicated that gluten-free pizza should have thin dough and us cassava flour or rice flour as the raw material.

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