Sensory evaluation is carried out by several sensory participants. Sensory participants are a group of individuals organized to evaluate a set of representative samples. During a sensory evaluation, each sensory participant is asked to, according to their personal or professional experience; give a score to a set of linguistic descriptors selected for the samples to be evaluated. The sensory participant can be generally classified into the following five categories: (1) Experts: the professional experts specialized in a specific technology (fabric hand, color, material surface, …), invited to evaluate typical products and define evaluation criteria. (2) Sensory participant specialized in analysis of quantitative description: the sensory participant trained to evaluate the products using standard linguistic terms. (3) Sensory participant of free choice: the sensory participant trained to evaluate the products using their own words. (4) Consumers in laboratory: the non-trained consumers invited to evaluate products whose experimental conditions (light, temperature, humidity, …) are well controlled. (5) Consumers in real purchasing scenarios: the non-trained consumers randomly selected to evaluate products in real scenarios (shopping centers, Internet, …).
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