Question 1

What is sensory research?

Accepted Answer

In marketing, sensory research refers to collection and analysis of data concerning the emotions evoked by particular sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures and how these can be invoked to influence behavior. Most people may be familiar with sensory research in product development, such as taste tests for food and smell tests for fragrances, as well as sensory research in advertising and packaging research. In recent years, however, strategists and marketers have become much more aware of how the total customer experience (CX) influences the customer journey and how all five senses contribute to that experience. Consequently, research into the roles of each sense greatly enhances their ability to create outstanding total customer experiences. Sensory research can apply to any stage of the customer journey, from triggering want or exposing need to creating meaningful awareness to consideration of alternatives to purchase experience to post-purchase usage and disposal. How will the customer experience the product pre-purchase and will that experience change with initial or continued usage? How might the experience be different at the point of purchase versus in the home? These are the kinds of questions that sensory research can answer for product development managers. How do lighting, music, temperature and other sensory stimuli affect shoppers inside the retail store? How do layout, color, images, video, “busyness,” sound, and other factors influence how someone will feel about your ecommerce site? Sensory research can inform your decisions regarding how to deliver the best customer experience in retail, ecommerce, and other scenarios in which consumers interact with your brand and products. At each stage of the customer journey, you might stimulate each sense to deliver ideal experiences that build engagement and reinforce your brand’s value proposition. Sensory research provides the facts you need to develop your brand’s “sensory signature” which you deliver via “360° sensory marketing.” Established and emerging methodologies play roles in sensory research, and the research requirements determine which are appropriate case by case. In-depth interviews, focus groups, and surveys are familiar methods that have been associated with sensory research for product development and advertising. Ethnography is also appropriate for some issues, and neuromarketing and biometrics are obvious methods to apply to understanding how consumers respond to any kind of sensory stimulation. Experts in sensory research can help you select the methodologies that are right for your business need and have the skills, tools, and other resources to ensure success.

Question 2

What the two distinctive challenges of sensory research?

Accepted Answer

The two distinctive challenges of sensory research are isolating the sensation you want to test from other sensations and translating the subjective experience of sensation into something that can be accurately described, measured, and analyzed. Of course, these are challenges for any kind of research in which people are the subjects, but they are particularly acute in sensory research because the stimulus and response are almost completely nonverbal and because people do not necessarily have a shared vocabulary for describing these sensations. The stimulus and response could be considered completely nonverbal with the caveat that words can influence how someone experiences a sensation. To ensure the integrity of the research, words are one of the factors that may need to be controlled. For example, two different groups were given anonymous samples of Häagen-Dazs. One group was told that it was a new fat-free ice cream, and the other group was not told this. As you can probably guess, the group that was told it was fat-free gave it lower evaluations for flavor than the other group, even though the ice cream they each tasted was exactly the same. The words changed how they experienced taste. Other factors may be more subtle. People behave differently in comfortable temperatures that are warmer than in comfortable temperatures that are cooler, so temperature may have to be synchronized across subjects to control for this effect. Moods and perceptions can also be affected by different kinds of lighting, so that also needs to be controlled in many cases. The presence or absence of other people can also have an effect on how someone experiences certain sensations, and this is one reason why many sensory research facilities offer isolation booths in addition to conference rooms for group discussions. As you can imagine, these challenges are magnified for in-home tests (IHUT). An expert in sensory research can anticipate these interactions and effects and will be able to manage them during the execution of the research. The second challenge, accurately translating subjective experiences into objective terms, can be addressed in the design of the research. Some people are better than others at discriminating between different sounds, tastes, odors, textures, and visuals, and some are more articulate when describing them. These people can more readily provide an accurate description of what they experienced, but not necessarily the same description. If your target market consists only of people who can discriminate between sensations and describe them well, you may be in luck, as improbable as that luck might be. Because people differ in their sensitivity to sensations, because some articulate them well while others cannot, and because those who articulate them well do not always use the same words, sensory researchers must find ways to get them all on the same page. Otherwise, results cannot be compared, aggregated, and analyzed. To accomplish this, researchers must have strategies for developing a common vocabulary for sensations and for managing the different abilities across people in the target market. For example, they may present subjects with pre-defined terms and concepts that have been established over time or they may have subjects work together to create a common vocabulary. Because they are good at discriminating across sensations and describing them, an expert panel might be assembled to develop a common vocabulary to be used in later stages with those who are less discriminating. An expert panel might also be used to pre-screen concepts which are tested with those less adept, using pre-defined terms or restricting the research to simple comparisons and easy statements of preference. Experts in sensory research have many strategies available to them to handle the challenges presented by the subject matter, and they can recommend an approach that will meet your requirements.

Question 3

Are in-home usage tests (IHUT) as good as central location tests (CLT) for sensory research?

Accepted Answer

For sensory research, in-home usage tests (IHUT) can be better than central location tests (CLT) if you are concerned about the “naturalness” of the test or want to test issues other than pure sensory experiences. IHUT (sometimes written as “iHUT”) can also be preferable if you are updating a well-established product and don’t want to incur the costs of CLT or you need to launch the product quickly and find IHUT to be faster than CLT. Of course, IHUT may be your go-to method during a pandemic. For certain products, the “naturalness” of the setting may be important. Suppose you want to test a new kind of microwave dinner. Would the consumer experience it differently if they were eating at some time other than dinner time? Other than their dinner time? Even if you synchronized the meal test with the consumer’s regular dinner time, would it taste the same to them after driving to a CLT and registering than it would if they just made it themselves at home? At home, would they add other ingredients to it, such as a favorite seasoning, which, to them, would be the meal’s real flavor? Would it be prepared flawlessly at the central location but erratically at home, given different personalities or potential challenges presented by more complex preparation methods? These questions can be answered via in-home tests. For sensory research, IHUTs can be useful if you want to test other issues in adding to sensory experiences. As the name implies, an IHUT is typically a test of usage that uncovers how people use your product, what they use it for, how difficult it is to use, etc. In the microwave dinner example, it might be important to understand flavor, aroma, aftertaste, and so on, but you might also want to know when they would eat it, with whom they would share it, if they found it difficult to handle or prepare, portion size, and so on. If the test was done at a central location, consumers might be able to answer questions about the experiences they think they would have, but their responses might not correlate too well with what they would actually do. On the other hand, there are many ways in which CLT is superior to IHUT for sensory research, especially in the initial stages when details and assessing alternatives are more important. The primary difference is that in CLT you can control the environment and other aspects of the test, increasing consistency across tests and maximizing your confidence in the interpretation of the results. If the product is in an early stage, you need the level of detail achievable in a controlled environment. When issues like packaging and preparation method have not been resolved, CLT simplifies the presentation of the stimulus to the consumer, and support staff can be on hand if assistance is needed. In CLT, it is more possible for your team to observe the tests, either in-person or via videoconference. There are some situations in which IHUT may be preferable to CLT, but there will always be trade-offs. Experts in sensory research can explain the pros and cons of each for your situation and help you make the best determination.

Question 4

What is Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA) in sensory research?

Accepted Answer

Quantitative Descriptive Analysis is a common methodology for evaluating characteristics of products with respect to the five senses and is used in the food, apparel, automotive, and other industries for which it is important to appeal to the senses. Methodologies such as QDA are critical because people are much better at expressing whether they like or dislike something than they are at describing it. QDA represents a way to get richer information about the sensory experience a product evokes beyond simply how appealing it is. In QDA, an expert panel is assembled and first tasked with developing their own vocabulary about the product or products they are testing, then with applying that vocabulary to develop their own sensory profiles of the product. Experts are typically frequent users of similar products who are likely to have richer experiences with them than occasional or non-users. As such they are farther along the learning curve with respect to how to talk about these products. Beyond frequency of use, panelists are also screened for their ability to notice particular characteristics and to discriminate across them and for how articulate they are, similar to how they are screened for many focus groups and in-depth interviews. These experts evaluate a set of products from the relevant category and describe characteristics they notice. These may result from direct observation or from making comparisons across them. To ensure thoroughness, they review each product multiple times and may be provided with a set of established dimensions to use as probes. At the end of the evaluation phase, the experts pool their findings and reach a consensus on which characteristics to focus on and the language to be used for each. In this way, each research participant has the same understanding of which subjective experiences are represented by each objective statement. Without discussion, each expert evaluates the test product or products on each of the characteristics developed by the panel. The evaluations are kept within the realm of the senses; the assessment is affective rather than analytical. To achieve this, the experts use an unlabeled interval scale which solicits relative assessments rather than absolute ones. Their evaluations are then aggregated, analyzed, and reported. As it nears its 50th birthday, QDA seems to be the most popular approach to evaluating sensory experiences, but it is not the only one. A sensory research expert can walk you through QDA and other methodologies to select and execute the one that is optimal for your business issue.

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