Rating System for Quality Control of Functional Instant Drinks

Excessive information about a functional product and its qualitative characteristics increases the competitiveness of the product and requires constant monitoring. The present research objective was to develop a rating system of qualitative characteristics for functional instant drinks. The system relied on the method of multidimensional statistical analysis and involved the main descriptors of consumer criteria and sensory properties of the product. The study featured functional instant fruit and berry drinks, e.g. raspberry, cranberry, cranberry, black currant, blueberry, sea buckthorn, blackberry, apricot, peach, apple, etc. The methods included a focus group approach, a sensory analysis, a new ordinal scale, and a modified method of multivariate statistical evaluation (PCA). The authors introduced a unified score scale for sensory evaluation of functional instant drinks, which reflected both standard quality indicators and consumer selection criteria. A modified method of multivariate statistical evaluation (PCA) was used to identify the characteristics that consumers see as the most important. The resulting rating system of the main descriptors reflects the information about consumer preferences and reveals significant sensory characteristics and indicators of quality of functional instant drinks. Clustering revealed two groups of consumers, young people aged 18–29 and those aged 30–59, with their own defining quality indicators. The article contains some useful labeling recommendations for producers of functional instant beverages. The recommendations can increase the competitiveness of the product and meet consumer demand for information. The new scale can be used for various types of functional fruit and berry drinks.