10/24/07 Taste Expectation

Taste Expectation. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Ever had your mouth set for a certain taste and then what you expect is wrong? Roger Harker with New Zealands HortResearch says that expectation has an important role to play. HARKER: What happens is as soon as you put an organic label on a product people expect it to taste sweet, better; and they rate it as being tasting better. If you put the organic label on the conventional product they expect it to taste better because it has the organic label on it and it does when they taste it, so this is the role of expectation in setting up what people actually, physically taste. Harker says this is the role of fruit industry marketing to build an expectation of flavor. He says there are several reasons driving the consumers' choices. HARKER: One of the great drivers of food choices these days is pleasure, the other one is health and convenience. But one of the things we have to consider very seriously as industries is all the research that is going on in terms of what is the value of fruit consumption. According to Harker, research done in the UK has shown that consumers are driven by perception. HARKER: And 80% of consumers ended up saying that they were essentially eating fruit because they stay healthy, they live longer. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.