86B-30

K. PACHECO, W. Prinyawiwatkul, I. Maciel-Pedrote, and V. Suvanich. Department of Food Science, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station, Baton Rouge, LA 70803

Lack of satisfactory marketing opportunity for overabundant undersized crawfish (30 million pounds available in Louisiana annually) prompts research to enhance its utilization as innovative or value-added products. Development of seafood sausages from mechanically recovered crawfish mince is a new concept. To develop an acceptable sausage product, it is critical to define quality attributes driving overall product acceptance and purchase intent. Consumers normally pay different degrees of attention to quality attributes when judging product acceptance and making their purchase decision. Attributes best differentiating the products may not be critical for overall acceptance or purchase intent. This study was conducted to determine attributes driving overall acceptance and purchase intent of a novel seafood sausage. 144 consumers evaluated 9 seafood sausage products. Each consumer evaluated 5 acceptability attributes: appearance, overall color, flavor, overall texture, and overall liking of 4 products followed a balance incomplete block design using a 9-point hedonic scale (1=dislike extremely, 5=neither like nor dislike, 9=like extremely). Overall acceptance (acceptable vs. not-acceptable) and purchase intent (buy vs. not-buy) were evaluated on a 2-point scale. Data were analyzed using multivariate predictive (PDA) and descriptive (DDA) discriminant analyses. Gender did not affect the way consumers evaluated the overall liking of seafood sausages. However, it did affect how consumers evaluated the overall difference of the products. Males primarily used overall texture and flavor to differentiate among products, while females were more detailed and used appearance and color instead. Over 84% of consumers indicated that they would buy the products if available in the market. Flavor and, to a lesser extent, texture were identified as attributes most critical to overall acceptance and purchase intent. This study reveals that flavor drives product acceptance and purchase intent of novel seafood sausages. Further product optimization and refinement should be more focused on flavor quality.