Using Virtual Reality Headsets to Study the Effect of Context on Consumer Perception
Open Access
- Author:
- Ginn, Jacob
- Area of Honors:
- Food Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Helene Hopfer, Thesis Supervisor
John Hayes, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Virtual Reality
Consumer Preference
Tea
Green Tea
Sensory Science
ANCOVA
VR
Liking
Health
Health Consciousness
Ethnography
Grocery Store
Context
Context Effect - Abstract:
- The environment in which products are purchased and consumed is thought to influence the consumer’s perception of a product. Additionally, personality traits may also influence how these contextual factors impact an individual’s perception of a product. This thesis is an exploration of the relationship between contextual factors during consumption and the personality trait of health consciousness (HC). The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of constructed context on an individual’s perception of a product by exposing participants to two different scenes (“healthy” and “unhealthy”) using virtual reality. There is increased interest in virtual reality as an effective tool for increased environmental authenticity and participant immersion in the field of sensory science; a secondary objective of this study was to compare perceptual difference between virtual reality and traditional booth settings. The final objective of this study was to relate induced context to the personality trait of health consciousness. The foundation of this study stems from an ethnographic exploration of Ready to Drink (RTD) bottled green tea in local supermarkets in an attempt to understand the steady increase in RTD tea sales over the past 6 years. Following ethnographic analysis of local supermarkets, 40 individuals participated in a two-session study in which they were asked to evaluate the identical RTD tea labeled as separate samples on a number of parameters related to product perception, including expected liking & healthiness and perceived liking, healthiness, willingness to buy, sweetness, and bitterness. In one session virtual reality was used to provide either a “healthy” and “unhealthy” grocery store context, while in the other session participants evaluated two identical samples and answered the same questions in a booth setting without added context. Following the product evaluation, participants completed a health consciousness questionnaire. It was hypothesized that there would be a lesser difference between the two samples in the booth environment compared to the induced virtual reality contexts. It was also hypothesized that the difference between expected and perceived liking would vary with HC. Finally, it was hypothesized that regardless of HC, the virtual reality induced context would influence the parameters of perceived liking and healthiness. The original intention was to recruit equal proportions of high and low health conscious individuals in which a bimodal distribution would be present across participants. However, a bimodal distribution was not present and therefore, participants were not separated based on HC. Rather, after accounting for context, the impact of HC was observed as a covariate in the analysis. Liking and healthiness difference scores (between expected and perceived) differed as expected between the booth and the virtual reality environments. The difference scores between expected and perceived liking and healthiness ratings were then further analyzed by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with HC as a covariate, however, HC was not found to be a significant factor in explaining the effect of context. These results suggest that there is not a significant relationship between context and HC in the perception of bottled green tea as evaluated in this study.