Impact of sensory food characteristic on оverall consumers’ satisfaction: testing a structural equation model

Subject of research of this paper is the influence that food sensor characteristics have on the overall consumers’ satisfaction. A statistically significant difference and direct impact was confirmed on taste, aroma, appearance and texture of the food on the satisfaction of consumers of the service. The analysis included a total of 185 completely filled questionnaires which were further statistically processed. The sensor characteristics of the food were measured through taste, aroma, appearance and texture with total of 16 attributes, and the overall satisfaction with three attributes. Furthermore, the validity of the questionnaire was confirmed with the value of Cronbach alfa coefficient of 0.892. for the total structure of the model. Structuring equation modeling was used to determine the impact of the food sensor characteristics on satisfaction of service consumers and with that method the strength of the relationship between the variables was examined. Moreover, the weighted ration was determined with a value from 0 to 1. Additionally, the research showed that there is a significant influence from sensor characteristic on overall customers’ satisfaction with a composite reliability (CR) greater than 0.6, and average variability (AVE) over 0.6. All regression coefficients (β) of the attributes are statistically important with a value over 0.6, and the most of the with values over 0.7. The average variability (AVE) which expresses the share of the determinants variance connected with their latent variable (constructor), for the construct “sensor characteristics” as well as for the construct “overall satisfaction” is with a value from 0.81 to 0.8. Also, according to the obtained data from SEM method it is confirmed that the sensor characteristics (taste, aroma, appearance and texture) of the food have direct statistically significant influence on the overall customers’ satisfaction with a significant regression coefficient of β 0.76.