SensoGram 31: Sensory Segmentation: Is One Man's Meat Really Another Man's Poison?   “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” – so runs the old proverb.  Certainly we observe individual differences in food preference – what you like I may hate – but how serious are they?  This has important consequences for food marketing.  If one man’s meat truly were another man’s poison we would have massive segmentation in the supermarket.   To explore the issue, we compiled a list of 20 foods.  The list contained some products that we anticipated would be liked by most consumers, and others which we suspected would provoke varying reactions.  The like-dislike reaction to each food on this list was collected from over 700 Australian consumers, a respectable sample by any criterion.  These people did not actually taste the items listed; they rated the notional appeal of each on a SensoMetrics liking scale.  Here is a sneak preview of some of the data … and a few surprises.   Let’s look first at the reaction to a product that was not a surprise.  The diagram below confirms (as if you didn’t know!) that just about everyone likes chocolate.  In fact, less than 5% claimed not to like it.       Next we look at three items which are very different in character  – cucumber, Parmesan cheese, and tea.  Anecdotal reports prior to the study suggested that we might expect polarisation in the reactions to cucumber and to Parmesan cheese (ie.lovers/haters).  Not so!  What we see is that all three products are well liked and, more remarkably, are liked overall to exactly the same degree.      Thus far, then, no real evidence of sensory segmentation.  However, let’s look now at the reaction to oysters and to marzipan (almond icing).  Here we see the classic, tell-tale signs of  lovers and haters:  in each case the response distributions are characterised by clumps of respondents at either end of the response scale with fewer in the middle.  Oysters, you will note, evoked an overall mean score of 53, which is around ‘OK’ on the scale.  But this is a case of a misleading mean; only a minority of respondents actually find oysters just OK.  Most either love them or hate them.    Of the 20 products evaluated, marzipan was the least liked of all.  The haters here outnumber the lovers.  Which segment do you belong to?       The practical implication here is obvious.  Suppose you had the choice of flavouring your new product with chocolate or with almond.  With chocolate you will offend almost no one (not on taste, anyway), whereas almond will alienate more than half of the Australian market.   At a scientific level, to what extent these preferences are genetically versus environmentally determined remains a fascinating question.  Marzipan appears to be a more popular flavouring in Europe than in Australia.  Is there a cultural influence?  And why is chocolate, a product processed from an exotic equatorial ingredient, so universally enticing?   If there is a food or drink that you believe evokes an absolutely polarised response from people, we’d be interested to hear from you.