## 2 Materials and Methods
### Questionnaire  
Data gathering was conducted using an online questionnaire [45] operated by QuestionPro (v20.4, Seattle, WA, USA). The screening and final questionnaires were translated from English to German and verified by a native German speaker. The questionnaires were back-translated to English by a qualified language translator. The questionnaire consisted of five sections. Appendix A reveals the scale and items used in the study (Table A2). In the first and third sections, respondents' emotional responses (positive and negative emotions) was recorded before and after evaluating the sensory taste properties of the biscuits, as one's emotional response to food is often sensitive to expectations based on the sensory attributes of a single taste [46], and the sensory attributes have a strong connection with consumers' emotions. Emotions are viewed based on two aspects: positive versus negative and pleasure versus displeasure. The EsSense25 Profile is a questionnaire that contains a list of single words that describe emotional responses to foods and was validated against the EsSense list (39 attributes) by [47], displaying a balance between positive and \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c} \hline \hline
**Characteristics** & **South Africa** & **Switzerland** \\ \hline Gender & 24.5\% & 46.4\% \\ Male & 75.5\% & 53.6\% \\ Female & 24.1\% & 25.0\% \\ Above 35 years & 81.9\% & 85.0\% \\ Education level SA & 22.6\% & \\ Grade 12 & 77.4\% & \\ Education level Swiss & & 41.8\% \\ Middle school or below & & 58.2\% \\ Above middle school & & \\ Monthly income & & \\ Less than R20,000 & 37.7\% & \\ More than R20,000 & 47.2\% & \\ Preference not to disclose information & 13.2\% & \\ Monthly income & & 20.9\% \\ Less than CHF 6000 & & 57.3\% \\ More than CHF 6000 & & 23.6\% \\ Preference not to disclose information & & \\ Marital status & & \\ Single/widowed/divorced & 38.7\% & 19.1\% \\ Married/living with a partner & 61.3\% & 80.9\% \\ Occupational status & & \\ Working & 94.3\% & 30.9\% \\ Not working/on pension & 5.7\% & 69.1\% \\ Geographic region & & \\ City & 85.4\% & 54.5\% \\ Countryside & 14.6\% & 45.5\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Demographic characteristics of the study sample (n = 216). negative words. The EsSense25 Profile was consulted to measure emotional responses (5-point Likert scale with 1 = not at all and 5 = extremely) [47]. In the second section, the rate-all-that-apply (RATA) tool measured the intensity of sensory taste properties using a 5-point unipolar verbal scale with 1 = not at all and 5 = extremely [48]. As a starting point for the sensory taste properties, a list of 12 sensory descriptors for the biscuits were retrieved from the study by [PERSON] and colleagues [49]. A trained panel reduced the sensory descriptor list from 12 taste descriptors to 6 taste descriptors (chocolate, vanilla, buttery, sweet, caramel, nutty) which best described the two chocolate-based biscuits and the discrepancies between the biscuits in the market due to their sensory variation [50]. In addition, the list of sensory descriptors was reduced to prevent loss of interest and respondent fatigue. The fourth section applied the Attitudes to Chocolate Questionnaire (ACQ) to determine respondents' attitudes towards the sweet baked biscuits. The ACQ consists of 20 statements [25] and implements a 5-point scale with 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree. To gain more insight into the reasons for consuming chocolates, [25] developed the ACQ to evaluate consumers' cravings for chocolate and guilt when consuming chocolate. Due to attitude's evaluative element [51], consumers' attitude of sweet baked products was determined after emotional response after the tasting of the chocolate-based biscuits, and reporting on emotional response before and after consuming the biscuits can create assumptions that may be triggered by the biscuits [23].