ABSTRACT The success of an effort to introduce a new product or to reposition an existing one depends on knowledge of features of products that consumers want. One way of thinking about individual liking and preference differences is to assume that consumers agree that a set of product attributes are important to them, but...
ABSTRACT There are numerous techniques used to assess consumers’ motivations for product consumption. It is quite common to obtain data from rated degrees of agreement with statements about possible motivators. The responses are then analyzed using statistical tools such as the analysis of variance and factor analysis. This technical report appears as: Ennis, D....
ABSTRACT Variation in the manufacture of consumer products presents a challenge when investigating the suitability of process and formulation changes to a particular product. This issue is particularly relevant when investigating small sensory differences, like those involved in discrimination testing. In some cases, a product is best represented by several variants. The traditional discrimination...
ABSTRACT The fact that variation occurs in the manufacture of consumer products leads to a challenging problem in difference testing. A product with a particular identity may be composed of different variants due to the fact that it is produced at different locations or on different machines. Difference testing designed to evaluate modifications of...
ABSTRACT Solutions to many market research, product development and quality assurance problems require the use of various types of product maps. Sometimes it is of interest to know whether products differ without regard to liking and preference. For instance, product maps are used to guide quality assurance, cost reduction formulations, and ‘me-too’ product development....
ABSTRACT The cost and timing of product testing depends on the size of the experiment. The power of a difference test depends on the number of judgments, a component of the experiment’s size. Power is the probability of correctly concluding that a difference exists given a significance level, sample size and specified difference. Efforts...
ABSTRACT When considering product differences that drive consumer liking, it is helpful to imagine a space described by sensory characteristics in which each product has a location. In this space a person’s ideal product may be found, so that if we understood this space we could predict the person’s degree of liking for each...
ABSTRACT A surprising number of applied sensory problems can be classified as threshold problems. For example, the time after application when an air freshener can no longer be detected is a time threshold. Similarly, the moment at which an off-note can be detected in a food product is a threshold. This information can be...
ABSTRACT A consumer product, such as a cookie, produces multidimensional sensory effects when it is eaten. In order to produce sensorially consistent cookies, it is necessary to develop and use methods that account for multidimensionality. For instance, a consumer may notice how dry or how hard a cookie is or how much moisture it...
ABSTRACT The A-Not A method is a well-known discrimination method used in sensory analysis and signal detection. The method typically involves either paired or sequential presentation of two products; on each trial the subject decides whether the product presented is A or Not A (A-). A is a product familiar to the subject, sometimes...