Between April 29 and July 27, 2025 Dr. Laura Domínguez Díaz from Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) completed a three-month fellowship at the Department of Market Analysis and Marketing Research. Research supervision and mentoring were provided by Prof. dr hab. Adam Sagan and Dr inż. Irena Śliwińska.
Laura Domínguez Díaz, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Nutrition and Food Science Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, and a member of UCM Research Group ALIMNOVA – Novel Foods. Scientific, Technological and Social aspects. Her research lines are focused on the chemical analysis of foods of plant origin, functional foods, food supplements (nutrients, bioactive compounds), and their legal implications in terms of labeling (nutrition and health claims), sensory analysis of foods (consumer hedonic perception and food neophobia), and consumer behavior.
During her research stay, Dr. Laura Domínguez Díaz collaborated with Dr inż. Irena Śliwińska on a project titled “Consumers’ acceptance of innovative food products: explicit and implicit measures”. The main objective of the study was to identify the factors influencing consumer acceptance of innovative food products by integrating self-reported measures of attitudes, beliefs, and intentions with implicit measures of emotional and physiological responses. The research applied a mixed-methods approach, combining sensory analysis, questionnaires, and emotional response measurement using FaceReader software. The project proposal received a positive opinion from the Ethics Committee of Krakow University of Economics. The pilot study was carried out in June, followed by the launch of the main research phase in July.
The project is currently being continued in three countries: Poland (Krakow University of Economics), Spain (Complutense University of Madrid), and Slovakia (Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra), offering valuable cross-cultural insights into how socio-cultural factors may shape food acceptance.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to the Center for Research on Economic Attitudes and Decisions (CREAD) for providing access to FaceReader software, as well as to Dr Magdalena Adamczyk-Kowalczuk from the Department of Risk Management and Insurance and Dr inż. Paweł Turek from the Department of Quality and Safety of Industrial Products for their valuable support and recommendations.
We also wish to thank all respondents who dedicated their time and participated in the study.
