Descriptive Analysis of Commercially Available Creamy Style Peanut Butters

This study was undertaken to establish category and product descriptive characteristics of commercial creamy style peanut butters for use in subsequent modeling of consumer response. An established descriptive lexicon for peanut flavor was modified with additional appearance and texture terminology to describe these samples. To determine the full category space for the appearance, flavor and texture characteristics for commercial creamy style peanut butters, a highly trained descriptive panel screened 42 brands. A subset of 22 peanut butters was identified which represented the available range of appearance, flavor and texture variations and determined the product category. These 22 commercial creamy style peanut butters were subsequently evaluated and quantitatively described using 4 appearance, 19 flavor and 12 texture descriptors. Using both hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis, 4 logical associative groupings of products were identified: store and name brands, natural brands, reduced fat brands, and some store or name brands with unique or unusual appearance, flavor or texture characteristics. Omission of products with redundant characteristics within a factor grouping enabled further reduction to 15 products for subsequent quantitative consumer testing to establish a model for descriptive analysis as a predictor of consumer research responses.