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Dr Robert McBride
BSc (Hons) PhD
Founder and Chairman of SensoMetrics, Dr Robert McBride says that measurement has long been his inspiration and guiding principle in research. He first became fascinated by measuring subjective things – “things inside the head” - when reading about experimental psychology and psychophysics while still at school. Subsequent studies culminated in a doctoral thesis entitled “Toward a Unified Theory of Psychophysics.” His ‘research positioning’ is, he says, encapsulated by the quotation from the famous 19th Century physicist, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin):
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”
A special interest in the relatively unexplored senses of taste and smell led him to the then novel field of sensory evaluation. Unlike most others in this field, however, he approaches it from a psychophysical, rather than food science, perspective, and consequently has a different mindset: “Sensory evaluation is not about the stimulus; it is about the interaction of stimulus and observer. It is therefore a psychophysical issue.”
Dr McBride was the first scientific psychologist ever appointed by the CSIRO, a research organisation renowned for excellence in the physical and biological sciences. During his 18 years at CSIRO he published prolifically and, by underpinning sensory methodology with psychophysical principles, helped put sensory evaluation on a more secure, scientific basis.
When he established SensoMetrics in 1989 he found that, from the measurement perspective, consumer product research of the day was rudimentary. He set about developing more rigorous and precise consumer metrics for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG).
In addition to the central importance of measurement, he realised early in his career that the hedonic response – what people like and dislike and why - was the key to useful consumer product research, and began conducting such tests over 30 years ago. He maintains that many sensory scientists spend inordinate amounts of time deriving descriptions of sensory attributes, when it is the liking response that is the key to consumer satisfaction and hence commercial success. “Liking determines what we do with our lives: with whom we spend our time, what we work at, what we eat and drink. The hedonic response is immediate and intuitive, it is not intellectual and analytical.”
SensoMetrics is about the measurement and understanding of consumer behaviour - the application of psychophysical principles and methods to everyday life.
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