Lost for words

Be it face-to-face or over the phone, it's no secret that people love to talk. But, when it comes to testing new products, talking is the one area where consumers fall down.

Consumers aren't trained to verbalise, says David Kilcast, business development manager for the sensory and consumer department at Leatherhead Food International. "They are very bad at explaining what they mean, so you have to dig deep," he says.

"The term 'creamy' is a classic example because when people use it, you don't know whether they are referring to the look, taste or feel of the product." He notes that consumers are better at defining flavours, but terrible at describing the textural feel of a product. "They often use the term crunchy, when they mean crispy," he adds.

One of the most obvious, but often overlooked rules when conducting consumer taste tests, is to focus research on the target market. "Kids products tested on a 40-year-old woman will not get accurate results," says Kilcast. "Testing on kids is being done now more than ever before. Children are extremely good at testing because they say what they think, whereas adults often just give you the answer they think you want to hear."

One hundred consumers is the minimum amount used to taste test a product, while big companies use 1000 before launch, he says.

He explains that letting consumers test the product at home, may achieve more accurate results, because the product is being used in a natural environment as opposed to a lab. However, this means loss of control, and could lead to problems. "A lot of companies want more control. The snag there is that it means putting people in a false environment."

Quit the small talk

The centre for innovative consumer studies, part of The Netherlands' Wageningen University, plans to avoid the artificiality of on-site taste testing by building a lab which acts as a canteen. Around 250 people will come and eat at the lab everyday, says Egon Köster, professor emeritus of experimental psychology at the university. He hopes that by removing the need for consumers to verbally explain their thoughts, it will be easier to analyse their true feelings.

"We will measure how long people look at different foods, how quickly they eat their meals, and what they leave on their plates," he says. Eventually, people will just think of it as a normal canteen and forget they are being examined, he hopes. "Facial expressions can also be analysed," he adds.

The canteen project will also give Köster the opportunity to analyse people's response to a particular product over an extensive timescale. In many cases firms think you can present a consumer with a product just once and gain an idea of whether or not they like it, he claims. "Marketers are obsessed with the idea that people do not change. But you must ask people their opinion of a product many times and then see whether the trend goes up or down.

"The funny thing is, people think that you can ask a consumer anything and he will tell you, but that's a big mistake, because people often don't know why they like a product.

"For example, people don't know that the reason they like Parmesan cheese is because it gives you a warm feeling in your throat. It is only when they try a false version, that they know something is missing, but they don't necessarily know what it is."

Asking people what they like about things is beyond their capability, he says. "They will make up an answer so as not to look stupid."

You also have to be aware of socially desirable consumers, he warns. In one of Köster's experiments, a product was sold under two different labels. One signposted the product as 'new', while the other called it 'healthy'. When under the 'new' label, the product received standard feedback ratings, but the consumers buying it under the 'healthy' label thought it tasted wonderful, he claims. "They also overrated buying tendency by 300% because they felt guilty," he adds.

A bad taste in the mouth

It's important to look at how many people dislike a product because dislikes always grow, says Köster. Richard Marshall, principal lecturer in food science at London Metropolitan University, agrees. "We often ignore things until they reach a threshold," he notes. In food choice research, you would ask someone a question in a number of different ways, he says. "If you want an accurate answer, you can't be too direct. There's an unwritten law in sensory science that as soon as you're asked a question, you change the answer, so sometimes it may be important not to give the consumer any leads," he says.

He also points out that it's very hard when taste testing new products to get people to give opinions on foods that they have never eaten, as they have no mental point of reference to compare. "That's why many new products on the market are often variations on a similar theme," he says. "I've seen people squirm tasting Heston Blumenthal's snail ice cream. In many ways, we shouldn't say yuck. As a food scientist I like novelty. Novelty seeking is very important, but people don't necessarily want to jump too far. NPD [new product development] is a gradual process."

Mandy Osborne, consumer science leader for Unilever's beverages global technology centre explains why consumers are cautious of new products: "We're born with a liking for sweetness and the smooth mouthfeel of fat, as this signals calories. We also have a natural dislike of bitterness as it's a signal for things that are potentially poisonous.

"People tend to be wary of new things - this is known as neophobia - because natural instinct tells us they could be a danger. Humans like things that are familiar, because it feels safe."

She notes that products already out on the market often come up tops when tested against new products. "When testing existing products against improved versions in a blind [unbranded] test, consumers typically prefer the current product because they are familiar with it. This creates significant challenges when testing innovations."

When semi-skimmed milk was first developed, it was unlikely to win out over full fat in a blind test, so the change would never have been made on the basis of taste alone, she claims. However, people will switch to new products if they offer new benefits over existing products (eg health benefits). "With repeated exposure to the new sensory experience, people started to like semi-skimmed milk more and more, and nowadays many prefer it to full fat milk," she says.

Face your fears

Because manufacturers can overcome innate tendencies by motivating consumers with an added benefit, we have to start the NPD process by looking at consumer needs, she says.

"Take caffeine - the brain likes the experience of being more alert, and learns that coffee provides this. Among regular drinkers of coffee, its aroma can promote alertness long before caffeine actually reaches the brain. This is because the brain has learnt to associate the sensory experience of coffee with the benefits of mental alertness, so the sensory experience itself becomes a trigger."

Unilever has just launched a new green tea in Japan - the first under the Lipton brand. Because Japan is the home of green tea, people already have a sensory script [memory] for what it should taste like, says Osborne.

"Our product has a very novel taste, and consumers may not switch to it on taste alone because it's very different to what Japanese consumers are familiar with. However, our green tea has significantly more catechins [anti-oxidants that provide health benefits] than the market leader, which we hope will encourage consumers to switch. It's also our hope that consumers will learn to associate the novel taste of our product with improved health benefits."

Before the retail launch of its ready-to-drink iced tea in the UK, Unilever decided to sell it in cafés first. The idea was that if people are with friends in a café, they are likely to be in a good mood, and will associate the positive feeling with the drink, explains Osborne.

The context in which you present a product can have a major effect on consumer perception. "For example, if we called Lipton ready-to-drink iced tea a soft drink, it wasn't liked very much as it failed to meet people's expectations of a sugary fruity drink. But when we call it a new iced tea drink - lightly sweetened with all the health benefits of tea - it got high scores because it exceeded people's expectations," she explains. "The challenge is getting people to try it in the first place." The knowledge learnt in the taste test, was then used to promote the product - the UK campaign for Lipton's Iced Tea was "don't knock it until you've tried it"

It's quite challenging when people have neophobia, so in the early stages of developing innovative products we often work with early adopters - leading edge consumers who are open to change, says Osborne.

With this in mind, Unilever's Consumer Science group has developed a technique called Referencing Experiential Knowledge. This involves inviting people to think about how the product has changed over a period of time, so that in a historical context the new product doesn't seem so scary.

"It's important not to force consumers to make an immediate judgement," she says. "We often see what we call 'immediate novelty-based rejection', where consumers give a negative response simply because it's different to what they are familiar with. It's believed this initial rejection is a postponement of judgement, because consumers haven't had enough time to fully judge the new concept before being asked for an opinion."

Problems can also arise when a consumer really likes (or dislikes) a product, because then they usually score it highly (or poorly) on all attributes. This is known as a 'halo effect' and makes it difficult to identify which attributes to focus on for improving products, she says.

While it might seem that consumers are the most fickle creatures to walk the earth, there's no denying that they play a critical role in developing successful new products - a lengthy process. And as Köster points out: "This can be expensive, but it's nothing in comparison to the cost of a flop." FM