This year in the United States, more than 15,000 new products will hit the supermarket shelves. Most will fail; many within a short time of their launch. What can be done about this incredible waste of resources?
SensoGram#4: WHAT CONSUMERS SAY THEY WANT VS. WHAT THEY REALLY WANT
What consumers think they want in a product may not be what they want at all! This is a perennial problem for marketing, although it often goes unrecognised. If we take the consumer's response at face value, we may actually be led in the wrong direction!
SensoGram # 5: GET YOUR PRODUCT RIGHT… IT’S WORTH IT!
Repeat purchase is critical to any product: it builds brand loyalty and ensures long-term success.
SensoGram # 6: MAKING FOOD EXPORTING MORE PALATABLE
Exporting our food production in ‘value added’ form is reaping great rewards for some - but the risks are high. Exactly what do export consumers want? Precise target marketing with different product formulations could be the way to go.
SensoGram # 7: SENSOMETRICS: THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS
SensoMetric’s measures are reliable predictors of a product’s potential to gain repeat purchase.
SensoGram # 8: 'CONCEPT CAPTURE''
An axiom for success: construct an appealing concept and deliver with a good product. However, the product must capture the promise of the concept; if it doesn't, consumers will feel let down, and they will not re-buy. How do you know if your product delivers on the concept promise?
SensoGram # 10: THE SENSOMETRICS SEQUENTIAL
There are three key stages in a brand’s introduction to the market, the ‘conceptual appeal’ that evokes trial, the ‘primary response’ at initial product trial and lastly the ‘in-use delivery’. Sensory evaluation must match this process if it is to guide development.
SensoGram # 11: CONSUMER QUALITY CONTROL (CQC)
Manufacturers keen to maintain product quality are often guided only by factory quality control standards. Why not make the quality control ‘consumer driven’?
SensoGram # 12: ‘CONSUMER DRIVEN’: WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN?
The term `consumer-driven' has become popular in recent times. What exactly does it mean? Does it mean asking consumers what they think they want and then giving it to them? Not really; in fact this is a recipe for stagnation. So how do we become successfully `consumer-driven'?
SensoGram # 13: IMAGERY VS. SENSORY IS STYLE VS. SUBSTANCE
A product is ‘experienced’ in two different ways. The way we process the image of a product is quite different from the way we process its sensory character.
SensoGram # 14: HOUSEBRANDS & GENERICS: HOW GOOD IS TOO GOOD?
The only certain way to maintain the edge for a branded product over a generic is to ensure that it is perceptibly superior in product quality. How to do this without breaking the cost barriers is the challenge and SensoMetrics meets it regularly.
SensoGram # 15: ARE YOU ADDING (+) OR SUBTRACTING (-) VALUE?
When you beef up your product - increase its size, add an inclusion - are you really adding value? It might seem that way to you, but perhaps your consumers have other ideas. Before you modify a product, check that it will genuinely add value for the buyer ... and not just cost to the manufacturer.
SensoGram # 16: IT’S ALL IN THE METRIC
The rapid progress of science and technology can be sourced at the beginnings of measurement - the invention of a scale of temperature by Lord Kelvin. Where would we be without a metric that defined temperature in a way that was universally understood?
SensoGram # 17: PRODUCT CHOICE AND THE BLISS POINT FACTOR
Why do we eat what we eat? Is it for nutrition? Well, of course; if you don’t eat nutritious foods, you will not survive. But is nutrition foremost in your mind when you choose food?
SensoGram # 18: RESEARCH IS MORE THAN DATA COLLECTION
Some people see consumer research as purely an exercise in data collection; however, in sensory research the interpretive thinking that follows is critical to the research process.
SensoGram # 19: TO BUILD A PROJECT IMAGE
In most organizations, the responsibilities for the product as against the image it will carry are separate responsibilities. To the consumer, the product and its imagery are one and the same – they join together in one integrated sensory process.
SensoGram # 20: THE SPURIOUS PAIRED COMPARISON TEST
A time-honoured sensory method can be seriously misleading, especially in the case of similar competing products. So called ‘preference ‘ easily becomes an artifact of the method, with disastrous results for the brand - anyone for a Pepsi Challenge?
SensoGram # 21: THE CLASS OF ’94: ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT!
A study in the United States a few years ago found that around 75% of all new products fail, some within a short time after launch. Is it mere coincidence that this is also the SensoMetrics `failure rate'?
SensoGram # 22: A SENSORY SMORGASBORD!
This newsletter gives a short summary of papers of interest presented to the Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium. Among the subjects address were - Could Taste be Genetically Determined? And Will No-fat Products Last the Distance?
SensoGram # 23: THE BLISS POINT FACTOR – NOW AND ALWAY
Seven of the ten top selling brands in the supermarket offer no nutritional value whatsoever. Nutrition will always come second to sensory satisfaction in the search for things to eat and use. What are the three key elements to the delivery of sensory satisfaction?
SensoGram # 24: SENSORY LIMITS TO MARKET PENETRATION
It is not unusual to hear someone say, "I can't stand the taste of diet drinks, I'll only drink regular soft drinks". Others, however, appear to be satisfied with the taste of diet drinks. Does this disparity have a genuine, sensory basis? Or is it `just talk'?
SensoGram # 25: THE HOLY GRAIL OF MARKETING
Many factors bear on the success or failure of a product. If we only knew the real hot buttons, we could devote resources to these and ignore the others. We know that while few concepts fail, product failure in test is common. It therefore makes sense to be searching for hot buttons at the product level.
SensoGram # 26: DID YOU GET YOUR PLEASURE QUOTA TODAY?
A SensoMetrics research project inspires the postulation of a 'Pleasure Quota'; that individuals may obtain a constant quota of pleasure from a range of everyday substances. Which products do you derive the most pleasure from?
SensoGram # 27: ‘THE PACKAGE AND THE CEREAL'
Your product is what matters. Everything else is secondary to that. Style will always be secondary to substance.
SensoGram # 28: SENSOGRAPHICS #1
Marketers are familiar with demographics and even psychographics, (splitting the population according to attitudinal and personality variables), but relatively few have yet to come to grips with Sensographics - splitting the population according to sensory preferences.
SensoGram #30: SCALES OF JUSTICE: MEASUREMENT IN SENSORY EVALUATION
Scaling is critically important to the validity of all behavioral science, sensory evaluation being merely one application. We take precision and validity for granted in physical measurement - you wouldn’t build a house without a proper tape measure – but it is usually overlooked in sensory measurement.
SensoGram # 31: SENSOGRAPHICS #2
As discussed in Newsletter 28, there is the potential for a massive segmentation of consumers based on their sensory preferences. But just how likely is this scenario?
SensoGram # 32: "TOO GOOD FOR WORDS" Part 1: THE CHALLENGE
We all experience sensations that are literally “too good for words”. If you are asked to describe a really pleasurable experience, your only recourse will be to hedonic terms, but in product development we need objective descriptors to tell us what it is that makes the experience wonderful.
SensoGram # 33: "TOO GOOD FOR WORDS" Part 2: THE SOLUTION
In the last SensoGram we discussed the difficulty in obtaining objective descriptors of a good product experience. Consumers can tell us that they like a product, but can’t articulate what could be changed to improve it further. So how do we overcome this challenge?