Using Hedonic Scales for Measuring Consumer Preference in Meat Products

When a meat producer develops a new sausage formula or reformulates a beef burger, the final judge is always the consumer. Lab instruments can measure pH, fat content, or water-holding capacity – but they cannot tell you whether someone actually enjoys eating the product. That is exactly where the hedonic scale comes in. It is one of the most widely used tools in food sensory science, offering a simple, structured way to quantify consumer liking and assess the market potential of meat products before they ever reach store shelves.

What is a hedonic scale? 🔗

Hedonic scales are measurement tools used to assess consumer acceptance based on preferences, typically built around a bipolar format that captures degrees of liking and disliking with a neutral midpoint. The word “hedonic” itself comes from the Greek word for pleasure – and the scale is designed to measure precisely that: how much pleasure or displeasure a consumer experiences when tasting a food product.

The 9-point hedonic scale was developed in the early 1950s by researchers Peryam and Pilgrim at the Quartermaster Food and Container Institute of the U.S. Armed Forces. Originally created to measure food preferences of soldiers, the tool was quickly adopted by the broader food industry and remains the dominant instrument for consumer sensory testing today.

Structure of the 9-point hedonic scale 🔗

The scale assigns a numerical score to each verbal descriptor, allowing responses to be tabulated and statistically analyzed. The nine points range from “dislike extremely” (scored as 1) to “like extremely” (scored as 9), with a neutral midpoint at 5 representing “neither like nor dislike.” The full structure looks like this:

• 9 – Like extremely
• 8 – Like very much
• 7 – Like moderately
• 6 – Like slightly
• 5 – Neither like nor dislike
• 4 – Dislike slightly
• 3 – Dislike moderately
• 2 – Dislike very much
• 1 – Dislike extremely

This structure captures subtle gradations in preference that a simple “acceptable/unacceptable” binary cannot. A mean liking score of 7 or higher on the scale is generally considered indicative of highly acceptable sensory quality, making it a practical threshold for product launch decisions. Scores falling below 6.0 typically signal that a product needs reformulation before it is ready for the market.

While the 9-point format is the industry standard, 5-point and 7-point versions are also used depending on the research context. The 5-point scale is particularly common in field studies or institutional settings where a faster, simpler evaluation is needed, and it has been widely adopted in food acceptance studies as one of the most practical methods to measure the level of liking of food products by consumers.

Hedonic scale as an affective sensory test 🔗

In the broader framework of sensory evaluation, tests are broadly divided into two types: analytical and affective. Analytical tests try to describe and differentiate products, while affective tests evaluate acceptance and are further divided into preference and hedonic tests. The hedonic scale falls squarely in the affective category – it measures how much a panelist likes a product, not how technically different it is from another.

This distinction matters in meat science. Analytical panels can identify that one beef burger has a higher fat content or a more intense umami flavor than another. But only an affective hedonic test can tell you whether consumers actually prefer it. Acceptance data measured through hedonic scales captures the degree of liking and then invites specifics about what is liked or disliked about the sample, giving producers diagnostic value alongside the raw acceptability score.

Suitable for both trained and untrained panelists 🔗

One of the most significant practical advantages of the hedonic scale is its flexibility across different types of evaluators. It does not require panelists to have specialized training in sensory description or food science terminology.

Untrained consumer panelists 🔗

Untrained consumers – the everyday buyers and eaters of meat products – are the primary audience for hedonic testing. In most cases, panelists correspond to naïve consumers not trained in the description of preferences, where their evaluation is based on taste and focused on the purchase decision and general acceptance. Their scores reflect authentic, real-world reactions, making hedonic data directly relevant to predicting market success. A large consumer panel (typically 50-150 participants or more) provides statistically reliable data on how a product will perform with its target demographic.

Trained panelists 🔗

Trained sensory panelists provide a measurable response to how much of an attribute is perceived, or they can rate the level or intensity of a specific attribute such as juiciness, tenderness, or flavor. When trained panelists use the hedonic scale, their responses tend to be more consistent across sessions, and they are better positioned to separate personal preference from objective evaluation. This consistency makes trained panel data especially useful in quality control settings, where repeatability matters as much as the score itself.

In practice, research teams often combine both types. Trained panelists can detect subtle formulation differences and flag technical issues, while untrained consumers provide the authentic purchase-decision response. Together, they offer a fuller picture of product performance.

Applications in meat product evaluation 🔗

The hedonic scale is applied across a wide range of meat product categories and evaluation scenarios. Key sensory attributes typically assessed include appearance, aroma, flavor, texture (tenderness and juiciness), and overall acceptability.

Evaluating single samples 🔗

For single-sample evaluations, panelists taste one meat product and rate it on the scale without any direct comparison. This approach measures the absolute acceptability of a product – for instance, determining whether a new seasoning blend for chicken or a reformulated beef patty meets the minimum acceptable threshold for market introduction.

Multiple sample comparisons 🔗

Hedonic scales are equally effective when comparing several samples in a single session. When panelists evaluate multiple variants side by side – different fat levels in ground beef, various marinade formulations for pork chops, or alternative curing ingredients in frankfurters – the relative differences between products become clearer and more actionable. In studies of processed meats, sensory evaluations using a 9-point hedonic scale have assessed attributes such as color, aroma, purchase intent, and overall liking across multiple treatment groups, revealing which formulation resonates most with consumers.

To prevent bias, samples are typically presented in randomized order, coded with neutral three-digit numbers. Panelists rate each independently before moving to the next, with water provided to cleanse the palate between samples.

New product development and reformulation 🔗

Different healthier meat products with improved lipid profiles – including frankfurters, fresh sausages, dry fermented sausages, and burger patties – have been developed with support from hedonic scale rating tests, where panelists evaluated appearance, flavor, firmness, juiciness, and overall acceptability. In one reformulation study of chorizo with a healthier fat content, hedonic scores revealed that while overall acceptability was adequate, firmness scores were the primary driver of reduced consumer liking – a specific and actionable insight that purely chemical analysis could not have provided.

Interpreting hedonic scale data 🔗

For sensory evaluation, the results from hedonic scales are most informative when computations yield means, variance measures, and frequency distributions, examined by order of presentation, user group, or demographic and psychographic measures. Statistical tools such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests are used to determine whether differences between product scores are statistically significant.

Beyond average scores, the distribution of responses carries important information. A product with a high mean score but wide variance – where some panelists score it 9 and others score it 2 – may face market challenges because a significant segment of consumers strongly dislikes it. A product with a moderate but consistently clustered score across panelists might represent a safer commercial bet. Researchers also look at how scores cluster around the midpoint (5), which can signal consumer indifference rather than acceptance.

Acceptance is evaluated through hedonic tests to assess the overall liking and degree of liking for individual sensory attributes, while descriptive analysis provides both qualitative and quantitative results of the product’s sensory profile. For this reason, hedonic evaluations are frequently paired with descriptive sensory methods and consumer interviews to build a complete picture of why a product performs the way it does.

Limitations of the hedonic scale 🔗

Despite its widespread use and practical simplicity, the hedonic scale has well-documented limitations that researchers must account for.

Does not explain reasons for liking or disliking 🔗

A hedonic score tells you how much a consumer likes a product – it does not tell you why. A score of 4 (“dislike slightly”) could result from poor tenderness, an off-flavor, unappealing color, or any combination of factors. Without additional diagnostic questions or descriptive analysis, a low hedonic score cannot guide specific product improvements.

Scale interval limitations 🔗

The 9-point hedonic scale is a category scale in which psychologically unequal distances are delineated by equally spaced descriptors – meaning the perceived difference between “like slightly” and “like moderately” may not be the same as the difference between “like moderately” and “like very much.” This makes ratio comparisons between scores technically problematic, though in applied food research with large sample sizes, the scale remains robust and practical.

Context and demographic effects 🔗

Consumer responses on hedonic scales are not culturally neutral. What receives a score of 8 from one demographic group may score 5 from another. Meat products intended for diverse or global markets require panelist demographics that are carefully matched to the target consumer group. Testing environment also plays a role – the same product may receive different scores in a controlled laboratory versus a more naturalistic consumption setting.

Analytical mode interference 🔗

Research has shown that asking consumers to rate attribute intensities alongside their hedonic responses places them in an analytical mode and can artificially decrease their hedonic ratings – which is why sensory scientists generally recommend keeping consumer hedonic ballots separate from descriptive intensity tasks.

Why the hedonic scale remains the standard 🔗

Despite these limitations, the 9-point hedonic scale has endured as the dominant tool in consumer sensory research for over seven decades. Hedonic scales are valued for their simplicity and internal validity, and their outputs – numeric scores that can be averaged, analyzed, and compared across products, batches, and panelist groups – are directly actionable for product development and quality assurance teams. The scale requires no training to complete, takes minimal time per sample, and generates data that is immediately interpretable in business terms.

For the meat industry, where consumer acceptance directly determines market viability, the hedonic scale bridges the gap between what technologists engineer in the lab and what consumers actually want on their plates. Whether evaluating a traditional ground beef patty, a low-fat chicken sausage, or a reformulated cured meat, the scale provides a consistent, comparable measure of the most important variable of all: does the consumer like it?

What do you think? If a new meat product scores a 6.5 on average across a consumer panel, would you consider that sufficient for market launch – or would you want to know more about the distribution of scores before deciding? And how should meat producers account for cultural differences in taste preferences when using a standardized hedonic scale for global product testing?

References

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/hedonic-scales
2. https://foodsafety.institute/food-fundamentals-chemistry/exploring-subjective-methods-sensory-evaluation/
3. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Five-point-hedonic-scale-of-sensory-evaluation_tbl2_354752627
4. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/2/429
5. https://porkgateway.org/resource/sensory-evaluation-of-pork/
6. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-025-00545-1
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7919803/
8. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/9/9/1334
9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2762053/