El Acceptance, purchase intent and preference of semi-industrial choc-olate in the Chontalpa region, Tabasco

Objective: To determine consumer liking in three types of commercial chocolate and identify the key attributes associated to acceptability, pur-chase intent and preference.Design/methodology/approach: Sixty regular consumers from the Chontalpa region evaluated liking for appearance, color, aroma, flavor, aftertaste and texture using a nine-point hedonic scale following an in-complete balanced block design to reduce the effect of fatigue on the consumer responses. Acceptance and purchase intent were measured with a binomial scale (yes/no). Preference was measured using a three-point ordinal scale.Results: The analysis of variance revealed that consumers assigned dif-ferent liking to the three types of chocolate with global liking scores be-tween 6.18-8.10 on the hedonic scale. The sample with the highest level of liking was milk chocolate and the lowest level was dark chocolate. Fla-vor (p= 2.56e-07), aftertaste (p=0.000161) and texture (p=0.00787) were the most important sensory attributes for chocolate liking. Taste (p=0.0475) and aftertaste (p=0.0247) were the key attributes for overall acceptability according to the multiple logistic regression analysis. Regarding purchase intent, the critical attributes were flavor (p=0.00294) and aftertaste (p=0.00930). The preference was significantly different among the treat-ments according to the Friedman test (p<0.0001). Milk chocolate was the most preferred.Limitations on study/implications: The findings are limited to the type of consumers surveyed so they cannot be generalized to a national level.Findings/conclusions: This study highlighted that the most important sensory attributes for the local consumer when choosing chocolate prod-ucts were flavor, aftertaste and texture. Likewise, preference was found towards sweet flavors since the milk chocolate treatment was the most preferred.