A cross-cultural methodological study of the uses of two common hedonic response scales

Hedonic scale use, cross-culturally and particularly by Asian consumers, has received little attention but is of increasing concern with greater globalisation of food markets and opportunities for exporting to Asia. The study reported here sought to test whether there were cultural, scale and gender interactions between European-origin Australian (n = 61) and Malaysian (n = 54) consumers' hedonic responses to food and drink stimuli. A between-groups design, one group using a labelled nine-point category scale and the other an unstructured-anchored line scale, both using computerised responses, found no systematic cultural bias. However, there was some evidence of gender bias. In addition, a task in which semantic labels (from the labelled hedonic category scale) were assigned to a line scale found no statistically significant cultural differences in the scores attributed to the labels. These data indicated that, in the context of computerised responses, young Malaysians used both scales in a similar way to their Australian counterparts. However, further non-parametric analysis suggested that the unstructured line scale encouraged greater use of a range of possible responses and, therefore, line scales may be a preferred option for use in this population. Crown Copyright (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.