Quality of specialty coffees: a sensory evaluation by consumers using the MFACT technique

ABSTRACT The sensory quality of specialty coffees, whose characteristics are related to the geographical environment, is appreciated by both the productive sector and the market, where the commercial relationship is guided by free choice on the part of the consumer, and the added value and price differentiation which depend on the quality of each product. In such a scenario, focusing on consumer trends is fundamental if one coffee is to be seen as different to the others. For that reason, new methods of analysis should be investigated so that the results are able to take into account the many factors which are inherent to the peculiarities of each customer and/or product. To that end, the aim of this paper is to propose the use of a technique of Multiple Factor Analysis for Contingency Tables (MFACT) on categorised data from a sensory experiment conducted with different groups of consumers, for the purpose of identifying similarities between four speciality coffees. It was concluded that the use of this technique is feasible, as it allows discrimination of specialty coffees produced in different environments (altitudes) and processing methods, considering the heterogeneity between consumers involved in the sensory analysis.

摘要
特种咖啡（specialty coffees）的感官品质与其所处地理环境息息相关，该品质受到产业界与市场的双重认可。在此商业场景中，消费者享有自主选择权，产品的附加值与价格差异化均取决于其自身品质。在此背景下，若要使一款特种咖啡脱颖而出，聚焦消费者趋势是核心要义。因此，亟需探索新型分析方法，以使分析结果能够兼顾消费者与产品各自特性所固有的诸多影响因素。
为此，本文旨在针对多组消费者开展的感官实验所得到的分类数据，提出采用列联表多重因子分析（Multiple Factor Analysis for Contingency Tables，MFACT）方法，以识别四款特种咖啡之间的相似性。最终研究结论表明，该方法具备可行性：在兼顾参与感官分析的消费者异质性的前提下，其可对不同生产环境（海拔）与加工工艺下的特种咖啡进行有效区分。