Resumo

Olive oil is a very traditional food product. It has been used by mankind since ancient times and it had become economically important in several cultures, especially in the Mediterranean countries. (IOC, 2016; Oliveira et al.,2012), According to Silva (2011), Brazil has taken the initiative as a player in the market in 2008 with the production of the first Brazilian olive oil. So, the novelty in this study resides in the fact that Brazil is an emergent market in the olive oil sector.

Scientific studies concerning olive oil market are mainly conducted in European countries (Delgado & Guinard, 2011). Therefore, this study contributes for the advancement of this research subject in non-traditional markets of olive oil. This paper provides an initial step to understand ordinary consumer’s sensory perception and purchase intent of olive oil. It also proposes to investigate sensory perception and purchase intent of a Brazilian olive oil brand.

Consumers in different cultures purchase and evaluate goods based on specific or in general attributes. Olive oil is a product which consumption is marked by identity and local culture (Achabou et al., 2010 cited byDekhili et al.,2011). During purchase process, consumers establish preferences combining attributes of the product: price, quality, country of origin etc. Olive oil is also chosen by this attributes and other ones (Jiménez-Guerrero et al., 2012).

After the completion of the sensory acceptance and purchase intent tests, consumers answered a questionnaire with predictive questions in order to outline the profile of olive oil consumers. This research corpus consisted of 115 consumers. Data were tabulated and processed using the software: SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences); and SENSOMAKER (Pinheiro, Nunes & Vietoris, 2013). For the analysis it was used descriptive statistics and multivariate statistics.

The majority of ordinary consumers could perceive intrinsic attributes of olive oil and distinct it from compound oil. This result is an important contribution concerning the divergence in literature about knowledge of intrinsic attributes by ordinary or initial consumers (Pagliuca & Scarpato, 2014; Espejel,Fandos & Flavián, 2008). Results show a distinction among the extract groups (utilitarian, naïve and expert consumers).

In general, it was observed that consumers showed coherent sensory perception towards olive oil characteristics, distinguishing them from compound oil. This fact is an important contribution of this study since it can be inferred that even consumers of a non-traditional olive oil markets have a certain degree of knowledge of its intrinsic attributes. However, regarding purchase intent and preference, consumers displayed a mixed behavior pattern not totally convergent to the sensory aspects.

Dekhili, S.; Sirieix, L.; Cohen, E. (2011). How consumers choose olive oil: The importance of origin cues. Food quality and preference, 22(8), 757-762 Jiménez-Guerrero, J. F., Gázquez-Abad, J. C.; Mondejar-Jiménez, J. F., Huertas-García, R. (2012). Consumer preferences for olive-oil attributes: A review of the empirical literature using a conjoint approach. In:D. Boskou (Ed.), Olive Oil - Constituents, Quality, Health Properties and Bioconversions. Croatia: InTech.