Consumer preference mapping of dry fermented lamb sausages

This paper focuses on using and comparing preference mapping (both internal and external) and partial least squares (PLS) regression in relating consumer preference data of six different dry fermented lamb sausages to conventional sensory profiling (quantitative descriptive analysis-QDA) For segmenting the consumers into smaller, more homogenous consumer groups, two different methods were compared, namely cluster-analysis and visual inspection of plots. The consumer groups were related to demographic and sociological variables. The alternative approaches to preference mapping provided the same general conclusions. For all the three approaches, preference was positively influenced by juiciness, acid flavour and odour, greasiness and lamb flavour. The cluster analysis identified four subgroups with different preference patterns and indicated that there were market segments for each of the six dry fermented lamb sausages. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.