Consumers’ texture vocabulary: Results from a free listing study in three Spanish-speaking countries

Abstract

Considering the great impact of texture on consumers’ liking of several products, it is important for food companies to understand how consumers describe the texture of food products. The aim of the present study was to get an insight on consumers’ texture vocabulary in three different Spanish-speaking countries: Argentina, Spain and Uruguay. A free listing task was carried out in each country with 107–120 consumers. Participants were asked to list all the texture characteristics of food products they knew about. Between 80 and 112 terms were elicited by consumers, comprising mainly words related to texture characteristics of food products. By simultaneously considering frequency of mention and average order of elicited terms, the most familiar texture terms in each country were identified, being the most frequently used texture terms similar. Results from the present work would contribute to a greater knowledge of the vocabulary used by consumers to describe the texture of food products and show the existence of cross-cultural differences in word usage within a same language.