The marriage of marketing and sensory strategies

Researchers have come up with a new way of working that, they say, bridges the gap between new product development (NPD) and marketing.

Robert Möslein, senior manager at Sensory Research ISI - a member institute of the European Sensory Network - says: "It's a combination of marketing and sensory information. We ask consumers for their thoughts on a product and then we ask a descriptive panel of experts what they think."

For example, in a recent study on cheese two out of 12 types of hard cheese were considered especially suited for processing as a light (low-calorie) variant. Creamy, yellow fatty cheeses were seen as suitable for cooking and a cheese that had intense flavours was identified as ideal eaten with a glass of wine.

The sensory panel is then used to develop the cheese most appropriate to the firm's commercial direction. "We can reveal the ideal product profile for a specific marketing campaign," explains Möslein.

The method was put into practice in Germany for a firm that wanted to launch a sugar-free fibrous bar. "It was important that the developer changed people's taste perception of the bar," he says. The NPD team had expected people to want the bar to taste less sweet, but in fact they wanted the same sweetness. Consumers also wanted the bar to have a firmer consistency because of its high fibre content.

In another example, a company might want to make an 'added calcium' claim on its multi-vitamin juice drink, says Möslein. He explains that although consumers don't necessarily want to taste the calcium, they want to taste something different in the drink to convince them that it has changed. He suggests adding a little more grape juice to emphasise its difference from the original.

NPD research firm MSTS is also keen on using consumer insight as back-up. When a manufacturer's research and development team wanted a steer on minestrone soup, MSTS recruited consumers to find out whether they preferred straight or shaped pasta and what colour they expected the soup to be.

"Bigger companies tend to use these methods but smaller firms don't have the budget," says MSTS business development manager Yvonne Taylor. The firm is using a sensory panel to compare products for a client looking to enter the milk market.