Development and Validation of a Consumer-Oriented Sensory Evaluation Scale for Pale Lager Beer
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Pale lager dominates global beer markets. However, rising living standards and changing consumer expectations have reshaped sensory preferences, highlighting the importance of understanding consumers' true sensory priorities. In this study, a twenty-eight-item questionnaire, refined through multiple rounds of optimization, was distributed across China and yielded 1837 valid responses. Spearman correlation analysis and partial least-squares regressions showed that educational background and spending willingness exerted the strongest independent effects on sensory priorities. A hybrid analytic hierarchy process-entropy weight method-Delphi procedure was then applied to quantify sensory attribute importance. Results indicated that drinking sensation (30.92%) emerged as the leading driver of pale lager choice, followed by taste (26.60%), aroma (24.77%), and appearance (17.71%), confirming a flavor-led and experience-oriented preference structure. Weighting patterns differed across drinking-frequency cohorts: consumers moved from reliance on overall mouthfeel, through heightened sensitivity to negative attributes, to an eventual focus on subtle hedonic details. Based on these findings, a new sensory evaluation scale was developed and validated against consumer preference rankings, showing significantly stronger alignment with consumer preferences (ρ = 0.800; τ = 0.667) than the traditional scale. The findings supply actionable metrics and decision tools for breweries, supporting applications in product development, quality monitoring, and targeted marketing.
Source: Foods
Institution: Beijing Technology and Business University
Language: English
Subfield: Food Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,499
Awards: G559097185, G64454484
OpenAlex ID: W4413340067