A comparison of five methodological variants of emoji questionnaires for measuring product elicited emotional associations: An application with seafood among Chinese consumers
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Highlights
• Emoji were used to measure emotional associations to seafood product names.
• Emoji profiles for mussels, lobster, squid and abalone differed among Chinese consumers.
• Emoji product profiles did not largely vary with question wording.
• Higher emoji citation frequency were found with forced Yes/No and RATA than CATA questions.
• RATA improved discrimination among the product stimuli compared to CATA.
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Abstract
Product insights beyond hedonic responses are increasingly sought and include emotional associations.
Various word-based questionnaires for direct measurement exist and an emoji variant was recently proposed.
Herein, emotion words are replaced with emoji conveying a range of emotions.
Further assessment of emoji questionnaires is needed to establish their relevance in food-related consumer research.
Methodological research contributes hereto and in the present research the effects of question wording and response format are considered.
Specifically, a web study was conducted with Chinese consumers (n = 750) using four seafood names as stimuli (mussels, lobster, squid and abalone).
Emotional associations were elicited using 33 facial emoji.
Explicit reference to “how would you feel?” in the question wording changed product emoji profiles minimally.
Consumers selected only a few emoji per stimulus when using CATA (check-all-that-apply) questions, and layout of the CATA question had only a small impact on responses.
A comparison of CATA questions with forced yes/no questions and RATA (rate-all-that-apply) questions revealed an increase in frequency of emoji use for yes/no questions, but not a corresponding improvement in sample discrimination.
For the stimuli in this research, which elicited similar emotional associations, RATA was probably the best methodological choice, with 8.5 emoji being used per stimulus, on average, and increased sample discrimination relative to CATA (12% vs. 6–8%).
The research provided additional support for the potential of emoji surveys as a method for measurement of emotional associations to foods and beverages and began contributing to development of guidelines for implementation.
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Keywords
Emotion measurement, Emoticons, Research methods, Consumers, ChinaSeafood
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0963996917301898
