What Consumers Won’t Tell You: Using Emotional Measurement to Reveal Hidden Perceptions in Food Innovation

Session Details: When food technologies promise safer, more sustainable production, insight teams are often asked a hard question: Will consumers truly accept it, or will new information trigger new concerns?

In this session, C+R Research and the National Pork Board share a case study on a disease-reducing food technology, built to inform industry stakeholders faced with the complex question of whether to adopt the technology after understanding consumers’ true perceptions.

The research integrated The Rational Heart, a behavioral-science-based emotional measurement approach that captures fast, instinctive reactions alongside traditional survey metrics. By pairing cognitive and emotional data, the team surfaced subtle but powerful signals of fear, apprehension, and watchfulness that would have been missed if they had only looked at stated attitudes.

• Design matters: Exposure level and information depth fundamentally change measured consumer reaction and the story you report back.
• Emotion reveals hidden reactions: A short emotional measurement module can surface barriers that are not fully explained by stated attitudes.
• Simulate reality: Segmenting consumers by natural attentiveness (engaged vs headline only vs unaware) yields more realistic market impact.
• Innovation can invite scrutiny: New technologies may raise dormant concerns about safety, control, and “tampering.”
• Better inputs, better calls: A more holistic design gives stakeholders clearer direction on whether to advance, adjust, or pause an innovation.