Consumers expectation and liking toward 'caldarroste' from fresh and frozen chestnuts. Influence of demographics, psyhographics and consumption variables.

Consumers expectation and liking towards “caldarroste” from fresh and frozen chestnuts were investigated on two groups of about 150 regular consumers of chestnuts using central location affective tests. Even if consumers expressed the same preference for caldarroste from fresh and frozen chestnuts, they showed an higher expectation toward the formers. The combination of freezing with a non traditional cooking determined a lower preference values in blind conditions an a lower expectation than the freezing process itself.A negative disconfirmation of the expectation was observed for caldarroste from fresh nuts whilst a positive disconfirmation was observed for caldarroste from frozen nuts.The information on the type of product to be tested enhanced the mean preference value of caldarroste from fresh nuts (positive assimilation) and depleted the mean preference value of those from frozen products (negative assimilation).The assimilation of the information tended to be higher in the case of negative disconfirmation (i.e. when products are worse than expected) than in the case of positive disconfirmation, which in turn was observed only for non traditional products. The tendency of the chestnut consumers to deplete their preference judgement towards non-traditional products is less than that to enhance their preference judgement towards products that they have high expectation for (mainly represented by traditionally processed caldarroste).The sociodemographic and psycographic characteristics of the consumers were investigated using a questionnaire by which product knowledge, consumption habits, interest in new chestnut based products were tested. The consumers resulted showed a interest in differentiating consumption and the more informed and quality oriented consumers are, the more they are willing to accept a product innovation coherent with the traditional image of the product.The results of the affective tests and consumer questionnaire were used to investigate the correlation between non sensory factors and product expectation and liking. [...]