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.