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 to the development teams to produce one or more prototypes that will optimize consumer response. Once consumer, descriptive and analytical data has been collected according to protocols designed to ensure the highest-quality data possible, researchers use one or more of the many available techniques to search for a basis for consumer choice.