Am I expecting this drink to be fresh? The influence of audiovisual interactions on perceived freshness in beverages

The concept of freshness has received recent consideration in the field of consumer science, mainly due to its hedonic dimension, assumed to influence consumers’ preference and behavior. Previous studies concluded that freshness could be defined as the result of the multisensory integration of olfactory, gustatory, trigeminal, visual, and auditory cues. In the case of beverages, freshness is also complex at a semantic level since it conveys different meanings. Up to now, most studies focused on consumers’ expectations by a collection of declarative data. Given the complexity of the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved, this approach needed to be completed by more objective measures of behavior. In this thesis, we focus on the influence of audiovisual interactions from which consumers can perceive a beverage as fresh, before tasting. The first experiments revealed that audiovisual stimuli cuing temperature and carbonation positively influence the perception and categorization of freshness in beverages. The second experiments revealed the existence of audiovisual crossmodal correspondence effects between bubbles size and pouring sounds pitch in carbonated beverages that were robust to variations of the stimulus context as well as the experimental design used. A final experiment revealed that the Pitch-Size correspondence effects in beverages are more likely to occur when the participants’ attention is directed toward the same features on which the correspondence is tested. Applications such as the triggering of perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underpinning the multisensory perception of freshness could help to increase beverages’ attractiveness and appreciation.