Product packaging is a significant factor in a buyer's purchasing decision. We have developed a method for creating package images reflecting consumers' taste impressions that balances the need to provide product information and the need to motivate purchasing. It uses a database showing the correspondence between adjectives and colors as extracted from consumer reviews. This correspondence is used to revise the colors in the original package image. Evaluation was done by having 40 participants drink target beverages and answer questions before and after drinking regarding their impressions of the taste and their desire to drink the beverage. The results revealed that displaying appropriately revised images reduced the gap between the expected taste when viewing the image and the actual taste. Displaying appropriately revised images should motivate purchasing decisions as well as increase product satisfaction.

Saltiness elicited by salt is one of the basic tastes. However, components of salt on the market differ depending on manufacturing processes and its taste as well. Salt manufactured by ion-exchange membrane process is composed of more than 99% pure sodium chloride, while bay salt contains trace coexisting components. Despite reports on sensory evaluation, the differences in taste are still uncertain because of a small amount of coexisting components. We studied the taste of salt with trace coexisting components; the bittern ("nigari" in Japanese) was evaluated objectively and quantitatively using a multichannel taste sensor with lipid/polymer membranes. A taste sensor is comprised of several types of lipid/polymer membranes for transforming information of taste substances into electric signals. The model samples were composed of sodium chloride and trace coexisting components such as magnesium sulfate, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride and sodium chloride. The taste sensor clearly discriminated each sample according to the response patterns. Based on the sensor outputs, we evaluated the taste by means of the combination of principal component analysis and ionic strength. The results show the taste of salt with nigari has a correlation with ionic strength.