Abstract
Suppose that novel element is joined into existing odor category by a certain odorizer, consumers are expected to evaluate unconsciously goodness-of-fit for new one to that category. In this study, we utilized odor category of city gas as experimental material. And we tried to measure how participants evaluated goodness-of-fit for odor qualities to odor category of city gas. Participants, more specifically, were instructed to evaluate unacceptability for the original odor quality and four new ones of city gas, against specified verbal label, “city gas odor”.
We found that thirty participants were clearly classified into two groups based on evaluating unacceptability for new odor qualities against verbal label. One group (neophobia group) evaluated original odor quality of city gas as significantly lower unacceptability than four new ones. The other group (neophilia group), by contrast, showed rather comparable unacceptability among original odor quality and some new ones. In addition, neophobia group evaluated original odor as same unacceptability as neophilia one. We measured, moreover, odor quality-relevance between original odor quality of city gas and eighty-eight adjective-pairs as mental workload which was concerned to construct each semantic differential scale. Results demonstrated difference in mental workload for construction of these scales between two groups.
