Evaluating consumer and sensory methods

Given reduced lead times associated with product development, robust but rapid and cost–effective evaluation methods involving sensory assessors and/or consumers are required. Ongoing work is evaluating a selection of traditional and novel sensory and consumer methods that can support the product development process. In the first report (RD414), the focus is on the sensory methods investigated for the evaluation of up to five samples (very small to moderately large sample sets).

We looked at eight different methods and found a good consensus between several of them in terms of the information that they provided. However, decisions on which one to choose is dependent on research objectives (e.g. description, discrimination or both) and a variety of constraints (e.g. time, resources and number of samples).

An evaluation of traditional and novel sensory and consumer methods suitable for product characterisation: sensory methods (part 1) – RD414 can be found on the project web page

Contact: Marleen Chambault
+44(0)1386 842256
marleen.chambault@campdenbri.co.uk