ABSTRACT Sensory quality assurance is a critical activity in the management of consumer product companies. Cost-savings initiatives, ingredient changes, and modifications to comply with new regulations or dietary changes lead to a need for product sensory measurement. Discrimination testing involves the use of a specific class of sensory evaluation methods. Such procedures are often...
ABSTRACT Data obtained from many forced choice procedures such as the 2- and 3-alternative forced choice (2-AFC and 3-AFC), the duo-trio and the triangular methods, are often tested using the binomial distribution. In some applications of either difference or preference testing it is desirable to include a no difference or no preference option. One...
ABSTRACT First choice, sometimes called discrete choice, involves the selection of an item from a number of mutually exclusive items. This means that when a consumer chooses an item, this choice necessarily implies that all other items are rejected. There are numerous models to account for first choice and often these models predict the...
ABSTRACT A project team selecting products for a category appraisal must contend with a number of competing objectives. One of these objectives is to obtain information on the performance of its own products and those of its competitors. This usually leads to extensive discussion and debate among the product development and market research members...
ABSTRACT A major objective for any company selling products or services is to uncover the characteristics that drive consumer acceptability. Every year, companies across the world spend a substantial portion of their research budgets for this purpose. Consumer products companies with this information have a significant competitive advantage since specific direction can be given...
ABSTRACT Among market research practitioners, there has recently been interest in scaling product or category characteristics (such as possible benefits) based on responses indicating the items with the greatest and least magnitude among a subset of possible items. The basis for this choice could be liking, purchase interest, importance or even a sensory characteristic...
ABSTRACT Claims such as “Our product whitens teeth twice as well as product X!” abound in advertising. Such claims have traditionally been viewed as statements regarding ratios of product performances and have been treated accordingly. In previous technical reports, we have both reviewed and extended traditional ratio based statistical methods used to evaluate such...
ABSTRACT In previous reports we have discussed how to analyze consumer motivations data. Such data typically come from studies in which consumers evaluate a series of degree of agreement statements about possible motivators. For example, if the product is a cranberry juice drink the motivation statements might include measures concerning taste and odor while...
ABSTRACT Equivalence is a term used to describe a condition in which two items differ by less than some predetermined amount. Similar terms include bioequivalence, parity, equality and similarity. Bioequivalence is used in the context of drug effect differences while the term parity is often used in the context of consumer product differences. Equality...
ABSTRACT In many companies passionate debates exist between departments on whether a product’s stellar or lackluster performance in the marketplace is due to its sensory characteristics or to its associated imagery. In order to address this very important issue, investigations that involve both blind and branded product evaluations can be very diagnostic. Such studies...