Consumer Testing

Phillip A. Bopp

Either select a section to read or read the composite on this page.

CONSUMER TESTING THROUGH AFFECTIVE TESTS

QUALITATIVE VS. QUANTITATIVE TESTING

QUANTITATIVE TESTING IN ACTION

INTRODUCTION:

Long before a product reaches the store shelves it has gone through many tests to accurately judge how well the general public will receive it. Because of the many taste and social preferences, this is especially true in the food industry. There are many questions that need to be answered before a company is willing to risk hundreds of thousands of dollars producing, shipping, and marketing a new product. A few of these questions include:

Will anyone like this product? If so, Who?

Would anyone of those people be willing to buy this product? If so, at what price?

How can this product be successfully marketed to those people?

Will anyone prefer this product over another to capture some of the market share of that food category? If so, how much?

In today's business world, nothing is left to chance. Testing the product before making a serious investment is a simple and effective way to answer these questions with relative certainty. Of course, nothing is ever guaranteed, but Consumer Testing is the best way to "test the water" for a new product.

CONSUMER TESTING THROUGH AFFECTIVE TESTS:

Consumer testing is a tool used to try to answer questions about the success of a new product. Although there are many different types of consumer tests, the Affective Test is the most popular for basic consumer testing of food. Affective tests, when done properly:

Allow different treatments to be judged to find the optimum accepted product. In addition, other products can be improved upon by testing results.

Break the masses of consumers down into smaller groups to allow an understanding of who will buy the product and how to market it to them.

Assess the market share potential for the new product.

This information is obtained by asking specific questions about a persons age, sex, geographic location, nationality, religion, education and employment along with their preferences on the product being tested.. To put it more simply, it stereotypes user groups based on these variables and learns the preferences of particular groups' eating habits. Of course this is not done because of prejudicial motivation, but simply because consumer preferences tend to be very grouped based on such factors listed above. This type of testing is a very accurate tool in understanding consumer preferences.

QUALITATIVE VS. QUANTITATIVE TESTING:

There are two types of affective tests, quantitative and qualitative. Qualitative tests measure subjective responses of a sample of consumers to the sensory properties of products by having them talk about their feelings in an interview or group setting (Meilgaard 1991). Quantitative tests determine the responses of a large group of consumers to a set of questions regarding preference (Meilgaard 1991).

Quantitative testing tends to be more popular for a number of different reasons. Quantitative testing allows the researcher to gain much more data and information in a much shorter amount of time than qualitative testing allows. It is also far less expensive to test quantitatively. But most important is the fact that this style of testing allows the researcher to ask the very specific questions, and in most cases only allow the consumer choose their response from a given list of answers. This allows the researcher to pinpoint certain areas he or she would like to concentrate on. This is much more accurate than wading through written responses from quantitative tests and relying the researchers own judgment as to what the consumer really meant in their answer. A well written quantitative test can produce deadly accurate data with little or no variables to allow the results to be tainted. Once testing is complete, the data can be analyzed and graphed for easy study and finally the company has a solid feel for whatever it was that they were testing.

QUANTITATIVE TESTING IN ACTION:

The information below is from an actual quantitative test carried out at Oregon State University. The test was designed to see if age and or sex had a significant bearing on the taste preferences between regular apple juice, unfiltered apple juice, and apple cider. The test was carried out during a Nutrition class and all students participated. The hypothesis to be tested was that young women would prefer regular apple juice for the light sweet taste while young men would prefer the unfiltered apple juice because of its thicker consistency and less sweetened taste. The test for such a hypothesis is very simple. Samples of the three juices were poured into tasting cups and identified by a set of random three digit numbers. The panelists were then asked to fill out their personal information on the scorecard while the samples were passed out. The panelists then tasted each sample and answered two basic questions on the scorecard as to their favorite and their least favorite. Pictures from the test are shown below to better understand the testing set-up. The scorecard that was used is in Figure 1. The information from these scorecards could then be used to help understand the apple juice market and what groups of people drink what kinds of juice.

Fig 1.

PERSONAL INFORMATION DATA/SCORECARD

Please circle the most accurate answer for each question.

Gender: M F Age: 18-25 26-30 31-35 36+

Which sample do you prefer the most? 523 960 147

Which sample do you prefer the least? 523 960 147

Comments about your preferences or dislikes:

DATA FROM THE TEST:

The respondents in this test included 17 females and two males. Of the female respondents only two were over the age of 25. After the testing was complete, the scores were tallied and the information was put into a graph (see Figure #2). As expected, the standard apple juice was preferred over the cider or the unfiltered by a ratio of over two to one. What is interesting is that of the four respondents that chose the unfiltered juice, were either females over the age of 25 or they were male. In fact 100 percent of the males tested preferred the unfiltered juice.

From this test we could assume that females 25 years or younger will prefer regular apple juice while women over 25 and most all men will prefer the unfiltered juice. Or can we? The key to accurate consumer testing to test many different people in different demographics and different age groups. Of my 19 respondents, 79 percent of them were women under 26 years of age. The test only used two females over 26 and only two males, both under 26. So although this test is valid, the statistics that it gives us should not be taken as gospel. A statistically accurate summary of apple juice preference, or anything else for that matter, should have at least 500 respondents made up of different age, economic, race, demographic groups. But for learning purposes, this test does show the basic necessities in constructing a valid consumer test.

Probably the most interesting part of the consumer test was the comments section. Many respondents said they did not like the unfiltered juice because it was too sweet while just as many stated that the unfiltered was not sweet enough. Others stated that the unfiltered was thick in consistency while just as many said that it was too dilute. There were quite a few conflicting comments made by the respondents. But at the same time, certain qualities were desired by some and not by others. Some preferred an apple aftertaste while others hated it. Different taste preferences do have an impact on choice, and it is impossible to please everyone with one individual food product. For technical information on what really is sweet, sour, thick, dilute, etc. it is important to have a trained experienced panel to accurately judge a food product. Untrained respondents (as we can see by the apple juice test) tend to have conflicting results.

Reference Cited:

M. Meilgaard, G.V. Civille, B.T. Carr. 1991. Sensory Evaluation Techniques. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida.