Evaluation and survey of nutrition and sensory quality in domestic and foreign milk sold in China

Abstract

Consumer choice of milk commonly lacks a scientific basis, and consumers are often unable to obtain the most suitable milk for themselves. As far as know, data profile has not been used to investigate and compare the quality of domestic and foreign milk in Chinese market. Therefore in the current study, we compared the quality of 112 domestic brands and 48 foreign brands using independent samples t-test, correlation analysis, multivariate linear regression analysis, principal component analysis and sensory analysis. In addition, a questionnaire survey was conducted to understand the factors affecting consumers' purchase intention. The results show the contents of protein, calcium and fat in domestic milk were lower than those in foreign milk, whereas domestic milk achieved a higher 50 percentile score in the sensory analysis, but the principal component analysis showed no obvious difference in sensory quality between domestic and foreign milk. The correlation analysis results revealed that the price of domestic milk was strongly positively correlated with protein and fat. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that protein has significant and positive impact on the price. The questionnaire survey revealed that protein, calcium and fat were the most important nutrients consumers sought to obtain through drinking milk.

Keywords:
milk quality; data profile; multivariate statistics; sensory analysis