Consumer-led approach to adapt a food-odors emotional lexicon for the Spanish population: a tool for designing the scent of food spaces.

Abstract

Aromas are powerful stimuli capable of triggering emotions. The Geneva Emotion and Odor Scale (GEOS) was developed to measure the affective response to odors, and was later adapted to other countries and cultures (EOSs). Also, an universal scale was proposed (UniGEOS) to be used regardless of the culture, but without considering Spanish-speaking cultures. During the present research, a lexicon for measuring the emotions evoked by food-related odors has been developed, adapting the aforementioned scales to the Spanish population and using a consumer-led approach. Using EOSs lists as starting point, the procedure was: to discard non emotional terms and translate the selected ones, to group the emotions and remove the irrelevant ones for the food-odors category, and to test the lexicon. The developed lexicon (SEFrOS) contained 6 categories, 25 terms. The lexicon shared some dimensions with EOSs, but with specific differences, maybe related to culture or the food-linked nature of the lexicon.