Best Practices

When a loyal consumer experiences your product, they consider it to be their own product. Iconic brands must deliver with consumer expectations in mind, or risk breaking faith with their core customers.

In the 1980’s Marks & Spencer introduced sensory specification into their private label purchasing process. To this day, leading retailers rely on their private label suppliers to establish sensory specifications that move beyond consumer liking to a standard of brand identity that defines the product.

The main sensory analysis tool that helps us define sensory properties objectively is descriptive analysis. The proprietary Compusense Feedback Calibration, also referred to as FCM, was introduced in 2003 and has become the most efficient and effective method for training and maintaining proficient descriptive analysis panels.

By using immediate feedback to train panelists, it takes as little as two sessions to train panelists with individual onscreen guidance.

Panelists input their response to specific attributes using a series of line scales. The screen displays their response in comparison to an established range. The feedback is immediate and accurate in identifying how close their response was to the target.

The immediacy and accuracy of the feedback acts as reinforcement, subsequently expediting panelists’ learning curve and calibrating their responses to the target range. The collected data is consistently precise and repeatable and will not only deliver your sensory gold standard profile, but will allow you to track any changes over time, including ingredient substitution and manufacturing location. These definitive profiles will help you guide all new development and future expansions objectively.

Consumer testing provides confidence in your product and the quality of data from testing is dependent on getting the recruit right in the first place. A well-recruited database of 5000+ consumers provides a solid base for selection of panelists. Typically consumer panels are comprised of 100 category or brand consumers. Using antiquated methods, 100 panelists would require up to 60 hours of recruitment, interviewing, selecting and scheduling.

Online screening, using Compusense Cloud, is the first step in qualifying respondents that meet the test’s demographic quotas. By using quotas, only as many consumers as necessary will complete the test, keeping costs and the number of required samples down. Qualified consumers are then able to immediately book their own time slot to participate in the product test using the scheduling tool. If for some reason a panelist can no longer make their original appointment, individuals can return and reschedule themselves in a new time slot.

Using Compusense Cloud, recruitment, screening and scheduling of 100 panelists can be completed in less than two hours, translating into a 97 per cent reduction in labour. This approach results in saving the equivalent of about two weeks of work and knocks a week off the project timeline. The Compusense Cloud approach to recruiting and scheduling can save thousands of dollars and deliver results in half the time.