Concurrent elicitation of hedonic and CATA/RATA responses with Chinese and Korean consumers: Hedonic bias is unlikely to occur

•Concurrent elicitation of hedonic and sensory responses is unlikely to bias hedonic scores.•Data were collected with Korean and Chinese consumers using CATA and RATA questions.•Results confirm results obtained with other consumer populations.

In line with research in non-Western countries becoming main-stream, the need to validate existing research methods with consumers from these populations increase. The present research contributes hereto by quasi-replicating with Korean and Chinese consumers previous research concerning the risk of hedonic product responses being biased by co-elicitation of CATA/RATA questions for sensory product characterisation. Using consumers in several Western countries it was previously reported that bias could occur, but was unlikely to. Eleven studies involving ∼1000 East Asian consumers confirmed this conclusion. The studies were conducted with diversified populations and across multiple product categories. Across 7 studies, there were no instances where CATA co-elicitation was found to bias hedonic scores. However, in one of four studies where RATA responses were co-elicited bias did occur, and hedonic scores were, on average, lower when RATA responses were co-elicited. It is recommended that the research be replicated with consumers residing in their home countries and extended to other East and South-East Asian counties.