The coffee drinking experience : product extrinsic (atmospheric) influences on taste and choice

Coffee is one of the world's most popular beverages, with an estimated four hundred billion cups being consumed each and every year. In this review, we investigate just what effect the multisensory atmosphere/context has on people's perception of, not to mention their choices concerning, coffee. We demonstrate how many different aspects of the environment influence people's choice of what beverage to drink as well as what they think about the experience. Specifically, the visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile aspects of the environment have all been shown to impact the experience of tasting and drinking coffee. This extensive body of empirical research complements the emerging findings demonstrating the influence of the receptacle in which coffee is consumed. Looking to the future, and acknowledging the profound influence of multisensory atmospherics on the experience of beverages, it would seem likely that there will be growing interest in optimizing and/or personalizing the environment for the kind of multisensory tasting experience that the coffee consumer wishes to have8