percept, a strong impression of wholeness, can lead to an informational
overload or being out of the reach of an attentional mechanism.
Whatever the integration level is to which perception of attribute in-
tensities is reduced, there is a further process of Hedonic integration to
a final, unidimensional, Hedonic tone (McBride and Anderson, 1990).
Moskowitz and Krieger (1993, 1995) quantified the relative importance
of the liking of attributes in relation to the overall liking. Moskowitz et
al. (1994) are among those who claim a synthesized concept as a whole,
only as such adapted to consumer segments.
Although there may be some inaccessible pattern recognition, in prin-
ciple, it seems possible to predict Hedonic optima on the basis of ingre-
dients (Lawless, 1990). Scaling, precision and accuracy were emphasized
by Lawless as upper limits to explainable consumer acceptability. As an
additional requirement he states that the sensory characteristics and their
interactive mechanisms are fully specified and quantified in the mea-
surement procedure (Lawless, 1990), which has to be improved as the
theoretical basis of acceptance evaluation seems not to be well estab-
lished (McBride, 1990). It is important to point out the importance of
ideal and rejection points (Booth, 1990). Consumer reactions can be cal-
culated and should be related to operationalized measures of the attri-
butes of the product that are actually operative in the mind of each
customer making choices (Booth, 1990).
When we agree on a definition of acceptance reflecting an affective
status of a product, we must separate all the situational and extrinsic in-
fluences from the perceptible properties of the product itself. Further-
more, we have to realize that the perceptible properties do not travel
individually, but interact with others and form indivisible stimuli. In the
following section an example is presented, where sensory effects only
become explainable when different properties are understood as being
effective as a unit. It is an example of sensory integration. Another ex-
ample is given, where an attribute is dominant and directly affects an
Hedonic reaction. We also find a situation, where the perceptions of sev-
eral attributes are condensed into fewer dimensions of Hedonic impres-
sion. An example is given, where changes of color, texture and flavor
properties resulted in integrated Hedonic reactions shared by one con-
sumer segment and other reactions shared by another segment.
To identify the mechanisms of integration on the sensory and on the
Hedonic level, it is necessary to have detailed information of the physico-
chemical product properties, the resulting sensations and Hedonic reac-
tions. This allows for analyzing how (hopefully not too many) single or
greg delong
(Greg DeLong)
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