Sensory Science and Consumer Experience
This year’s Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium was a great introduction of new techniques that get at the heart of the consumer experience and to unlock the insights into ensure successful product launches using both implicit association tests and explicit measurements. The speakers had a deep knowledge of human behavior, physiology, and techniques to measure the impact of product changes (visual, tactile, functional, taste and smell, environmental impact, sustainability, etc.) to product perception and repeat purchase. The conference is always an intriguing bellwether of the state of our discipline.
New Techniques to understand Consumer Repeat Purchases
There are many new and exciting techniques to understand truly what drives consumer behavior when it comes to repeat purchase and ultimately product sales. Measuring product success must include not only the traditional measurement of taste and smell but all the stimuli that contributes to the wholistic consumer experience. Combining implicit association test and explicit measurements will more accurately predict product sales success. Researchers demonstrated how AI, machine learning and the creation of a digital “persona” that mimics a target consumer based on behavioral, emotional, consumption patterns, gender, age, etc. could be used as a screening tool to shorten the front-end innovation cycle. As with all new methodologies and tools, identifying the optimal process to generate valid information will need to be tested.
Marrying Sensory Science and Social Science
Sensory scientists are partnering with consumer insights, psychologists, and physiologist teams to ensure terms and behavioral inputs are captured when asking consumers their opinion of a given product. A main theme of the symposium was highlighting the importance of taking a wholistic approach to designing products that will be successful in the marketplace. Including emotion behavior, situational circumstances, brand loyalty and price into the final testing protocols can differentiate purchase patterns when overall acceptance scores show no difference. Of course, there is a time and place for the traditional method, (consumer acceptance, product descriptions with expert tasters) however these techniques alone are not always a good predictor to product success after the first bite.
Pangborn 2027 Expanding Horizons
As we anticipation Pangborn 2027 and our rendezvous in Merida, Mexico, it will be exciting to see how new research that pairs traditional sensory science with social and behavioral science and A.I. technologies evolve. Sensory and Consumer sciences is all about what moves the needle for consumer behavior and choices made.
