at Tue, 27 Dec 2005 10:41:10 GMT in
.com,
(Chembake) wrote :



...Why I consider consumer panel as unreliable as they are not trained
in an objective manner like the in house panel which are mostly
professionals in food processing. Consumers can come from a wide range
of background and have already a bias how a food should taste according
to their experience and prejudice


Exactly. And those biasses need to be taken into account, *not* eliminated
during tastings because indeed the consuming public does have expectations
about what certain foods should taste like and if you develop a product
that deviates from these expectations in ways the customers find to be a
negative, even though to the "trained professional" such things would be
simply another item of note as opposed to a negative as such, it risks
doing poorly in the marketplace.

It has never been a part of my experience that a product that has
passed the professional panel was rejected later by the consumers as
the mode of consumer acceptance was also taken into account before the
product is to be launched. Thorough study was already being made and
consumer expectation for that product was taken into account.
Consumer may not like it due to other reasons such as for example as
its expensive.
( but it has nothing to do with the tastes)
An example was the launching of a candy apple that contains a layer of
caramel and chocolate above it. Prior to that the expectation how the
customer would like the product to appear and taste was taken into
consideration and when it was released to the market it result in
successful sales.

The professional panel should thus not be conducted so as to *rate* the
food product in the sense of quality judgement, but rather simply to break
down its sensory qualities into neutral descriptors. There the panel is of
great value because consumers may not be able to describe in precise
language exactly what they're tasting. But they will be a better, or more
accurate, judge of its ultimate quality because in the end it is they that
you have to please.

In the professional sensory analysis there are some point in that
series that include simulated consumer panel evaluation using the
company staff which most of them are not trained in the science of
sensory analysis but perform and equivalent job and the results were
also mathematically analyzed .BTW the things to be tested are coded to
prevent bias..But at least at that kind of crowd there is a coaching
process how they should describe the product according to their
individual perception if they are the consumer although the results is
still considered as supplementary to what the trained test panel
already did extensively by technical means.
Even from that 'mock' consumer panel it can be extrapolated
mathematically how the actual customer will buy the product and will it
support the analytical evaluation of their trained colleagues..

In the actual market situation its not only essentially the goods that
is sold but also the external appearance and the marketing strategy
that influences the success of the product.
So whether more or less customer in the product launch did evaluate the
product from the initial purchase , good marketing skills can still
influence the buying pattern for that product.

It's very similar to the process of drug research....
you still have to go through the clinical trial...
That is part of the risk that any researcher will have to accept , but
a drug is not directly tested on humans but on animals; unlike most
confectionery research result which is tested directly by humans.
No, a clinical trial is by definition performed on human patients.
Nope... clinical means analytical and coolly dispassionate in doing
the task but is expected to get results in an objective manner.


Not in the case of the medical industry. In this context the clinical trial
means those trials conducted on live patients. I agree that your usage of
clinical as an adjective is one sometimes used to describe a variety of
situations, but when one is referring to the medical industry it would be
rare usage at best because of the probability of confusion.

A food professional rarely worries that the use of such term that
indicate objectivity will be construed as medical in meaning; in fact
it was applied occasionally to describe how the evaluation is to be
done..i.e in clinical manner.

Consumer panels cannot do that..
It means looking at things in objective manner with no pretense or
influence from emotions

I'd analogise this to the case between the trained test panel
and the consumer panel. The test panel represents the animal subject -
a carefully selected group with calibrated response which you can
measure. The consumer panel is the clinical subjects - a group
representing the end target of the product who must themselves be
sampled to get results that give you data on real reactions as opposed
to reactions in a test case.


You got it wrong....an in house trained panel are professionally
trained in sensory analysis...but consumer panels are mostly
not...therefore from your own analogy the latter are considered the
monkeys while the fomer are the humans as they think carefully before
giving a sound sensory assessment.



It sounds like you misinterpreted the analogy, because in the medical field
the purpose of lab work on animals is to understand baseline
characteristics of a drug and establish, often at a microcellular level,
the biological and biochemical processes taking place - the "objective"
side of the analysis where you're trying to break down the behaviour of the
drug into its constituent effects.

Nope

Meanwhile the clinical phase is conducted to find out how the drug performs
in the real world. Here what's being looked for is the overall effect on
the patient - in the broadest sense whether it does harm or good, and also
to a certain extent what side effects and other developments may be
expected.

Clinically speaking it's the medical personnel who can translate
those effects of certain drugs that can only be understood by the
fellow practitioners.
It has no relation how confectionery technologist think when testing a
new confectionery item. Or developing a new one.

So back to the food industry, the sensory panel would IMHO be primarily
about breaking down the taste and other qualities into their component
elements, where the consumer panel would be primarily about gauging overall
reaction. These would match nicely against the drug industry phases I
described.

In professional sensory analysis there is also also a common
terminology that is only understood by their peers( which we call as
jargon). They try to explain the difference in taste , flavor and
texture , it also includes the other qualities of the food item being
evaluated. There are many descriptors that only the trained panel
members can understand.

In both cases the panels are the *subjects*, not the *experimenters*, so
whether they think carefully is itself irrelevant as concerns the analogy,
but in any case I wouldn't suggest that consumers aren't thinking
carefully. It's rather that their thought processes are different and not
directed so much at a component-by-component breakdown as at an overall
assessment.

I don't think that consumers can aptly break down their experiences
to the point that it can be mathematically analyzed in the same
accuracy due to the use of proper terminology as the professional
panel.. Taking a costumers comment seriously that are untrained is
similar to relying on the belief that the consumers never lie on their
experience , but how do you know if they have a certain prejudice for
that item which can influence their decision making?

Besides the type of sensory analysis done by the consumer sensory panel
is based on like and dislike which are not considered objective as that
can be influenced by emotion and prejudice.


Still, given that at the end of the day the goal is to create a
product that will be liked, the consumer must factor into this very
prominently and although you might assume that you can know what consumer
reaction is likely to be the actual testing gives real data as opposed to
statistical projections.

Mere customer evaluation not considered real data as that is considered
subjective( and even shallow). Unless the product is really new that
there are no benchmarks to compare then the consumer will have to be
asked if the novelty food item will succeed if supposing its launched
in the market; but if there is another product that can be used for
comparison then again I reiterate that the consumers feedback are just
considered supportive as the exhaustive sensory analysis by the trained
test panel have already established if that particular developed item
will succeed or not .

The grading system for a consumer sensory analysis is not as elaborate
as the from the trained sensory panel.
Therefore its not considered to be of primary importance but only
secondary( or supporting) in nature.


Why should a less-detailed report be given lesser weight? The only thing
that a detailed report gives you automatically is - more detail. It cannot
be assumed that because you have more detail you have more important
information. This is especially true when the needed information is a
subjective assessment that at the point of the buy decision comes down
quite often to the simple question - do I like it or not? Being able to
dissect *why* you like it is ultimately unimportant until after the fact.

It is the exactness of the results that is supported by details...the
relevance of the mathematical analysis is difficult to refute or to set
aside in favor of a non exact methods or based on emotions of like and
dislike by the consumers.
I say once again that is difficult for a mere chef to understand the
innerworkings of the food product research.
For more analogy say to relate to as story about the blind men and the
elephant
The blind men are the customers who only see one point of view of the
elephant. He or she may like or dislike that particular item but due to
limited perspective he cannot comprehend that the elephant is more than
one part he had felt by the absence of sight
Meanwhile a trained test panel is not blind and his or her sensory
faculties are carefully cultivated to be used as an important tool for
the job. So as he has no handicap he can judge what the elephant really
is.

I would emphasize that the trained panel see the elephant in many
angles so its more exacting than feeling only a part of it.

Besides you cannot compare a pharmaceutical evaluation of a new drug to
testing a new confectionery product.
The drug testing takes years...
Meanwhile the confectionery product does not take that long ...


Timescales involved aren't important, necessarily, to the similarity of the
process. I'm using the drug example as an illustration of a similar overall
situation - the need to test heretofore unknown products whose effect is on
humans - humans who react in often unpredictable ways that have to be

Unknown products?....how can that be a confectionery product is
supposed to be known and its not as dangerous or risky if compared to
drug use

accounted for rather than dismissed and which therefore tend to make the
process of product development somewhat less clear-cut, less easy to
operate like a deterministic algorithim, than for example developing a
machine to interact with other machines.


Product development uses tools that are easy to understand and to apply
by the professional trained in that discipline but would be so alien(
and therefore incomprehensible) to the uninitiated in such field.
That is the cause of confusion;;;when a tradesmen tries to understand
the professional work of the food specialist but don't have the
proper mindset and training to absorb it.

Besides humans react positively to a confectionery product than to a
drug which may arouse some suspicions due to unknown side effect.
The quality attributes of new drug is not comparable to the
attributes of a confection that is known to arouse pleasure in the
consumption in the latter.
Lets consider another example; confectionery industry arise from the
apothecaries experience on how to make drugs pleasant to take by the
patience so the included sugars and syrups, cooling agents and other
additives that contribute pleasures in the intake of medicine which
otherwise is unpalatable.
....




I suspect it's also inaccurate to call the soldiers the customers ...
The military organization who requested such product is the customer
and the soldiers are the consumers.
...

I don't see it that way,,,, any food product develop for buying
customer had its own ;blueprint' or plan how its to developed and
handled at the most economically reasonable way that will help bring
the cost down. That is why there a widespread application of
statistical methods such as Robust Product design, Design of
experiments, Evolutionary operations, Taguchi methods which are
incomprehensible to a non statistically minded individual.
Trying to have every food product created by the food designer be
tasted by the consumer is a grossly expensive and time consuming...

Most statistical controls have to do with testing samples as opposed to the
entire production run, however, you can't simply translate the statistical
data from one product to a different product, even if the products are
similar. The new product must have its own statistics be generated and this
involves data-gathering.

Your understanding of the statistical tools is unfortunately not
sufficient enough in order to comprehend its importance in food
product development

Nonetheless, it sounds as though what you mention may be the *actual*
primary objection to the use of consumer panels - high cost. Well, if that
is the case, there's no point in wasting time arguing about other reasons
as to why consumer panels should not be used - these other reasons are
simply attempts to justify a decision made for a different reason - a valid
reason that should be stated upfront. If it's too expensive, it's too
expensive.




The problem is, it's a bit like a new drug, isn't it? If the consumer has
no way to know whether a particular ingredient could be fatal, should he be
expected to take it? Even with a modicum of common sense, clearly an
informed consumer will shun such a product until research does exist to
establish what the risks are. Thus that the deeply allergic will avoid soy
lecithin is a very rational decision indeed.

The consumer and the patient have different frame of mind; the patient
needs to take the drug due to the belief that it will cure his ailment,
but the confectionery consumer will eat the confection ( it may or may
not be to his expectations but its not life threatening like the
patient experience) but at least he or she can derive some form of
pleasure in its consumption as its sweet and he or she is unlikely to
puke due to it.
--

at Wed, 28 Dec 2005 06:12:38 GMT in
.com,
(Chembake) wrote :

at Tue, 27 Dec 2005 10:41:10 GMT in
s.com,
(Chembake) wrote :

...
In the actual market situation its not only essentially the goods that
is sold but also the external appearance and the marketing strategy
that influences the success of the product.
So whether more or less customer in the product launch did evaluate the
product from the initial purchase , good marketing skills can still
influence the buying pattern for that product.

Indeed, that's a possibility, and in fact an excellent marketing strategy
can "rescue" a middling product. But when you get the combined effect of a
well-received product and a good marketing campaign, you can get a sales
bonanza. By contrast even the slickest marketing can rarely salvage an
honest-to-goodness dud. The simple fact that such duds can and do occur in
the food industry indicates that the evaluation process as you describe it
isn't infalliable.

It's very similar to the process of drug research....
....
No, a clinical trial is by definition performed on human patients.
Nope... clinical means analytical and coolly dispassionate in doing
the task but is expected to get results in an objective manner.

Not in the case of the medical industry. In this context the clinical
trial means those trials conducted on live patients...

A food professional rarely worries that the use of such term that
indicate objectivity will be construed as medical in meaning; in fact
it was applied occasionally to describe how the evaluation is to be
done..i.e in clinical manner.

Perhaps not, but since this was a term introduced to refer to my analogy to
the medical/drug research field, in this case the term must be used in the
sense inferred in the medical industry.

It sounds like you misinterpreted the analogy, because in the medical
field the purpose of lab work on animals is to understand baseline
characteristics of a drug and establish, often at a microcellular
level, the biological and biochemical processes taking place - the
"objective" side of the analysis where you're trying to break down the
behaviour of the drug into its constituent effects.

Nope

What, exactly, are you disagreeing with here?


Meanwhile the clinical phase is conducted to find out how the drug
performs in the real world. Here what's being looked for is the overall
effect on the patient - in the broadest sense whether it does harm or
good, and also to a certain extent what side effects and other
developments may be expected.

Clinically speaking it's the medical personnel who can translate
those effects of certain drugs that can only be understood by the
fellow practitioners.
It has no relation how confectionery technologist think when testing a
new confectionery item. Or developing a new one.

The relation is between the 2 groups of *test subjects* in the 2 cases -
lab animals vs. professional test panels, human patients vs. consumer
panels. However, and this is important, I'm not equating the external
characteristics of the individual subjects, so that in no way am I trying
to imply that professional testers are like lab animals. What I'm saying is
that the body - the group, performs a similar function whatever their
external characteristics. So that if in the medical case the need is for
somewhat unintelligent creatures as test subjects, and in the food case for
test subjects who are anything but unintelligent, that's wide of the
analogy itself.

....

In both cases the panels are the *subjects*, not the *experimenters*,
so whether they think carefully is itself irrelevant as concerns the
analogy, but in any case I wouldn't suggest that consumers aren't
thinking carefully. It's rather that their thought processes are
different and not directed so much at a component-by-component
breakdown as at an overall assessment.

I don't think that consumers can aptly break down their experiences
to the point that it can be mathematically analyzed in the same
accuracy due to the use of proper terminology as the professional
panel..

If you tried to extract the same level of detail out of the consumers for
the same product, you could expect larger variances - i.e. a wider overall
statistical distribution of the results, but this would be a reflection of
the level of detail sought, not the accuracy of the analysis that can be
performed. You'd just be trying to obtain finer resolution of the data than
the available sample could accurately reveal. If, on the other hand, you
restricted your questions to simple like/dislike response - the sort of
level a consumer would probably respond on, then you would get probably
equally accurate results - or to be precise in the language, results whose
sample variance accurately reflected the distribution of the entire
population. That's the whole goal of test panels - to estimate, by
sampling, the overall statistical response of the population.

Taking a costumers comment seriously that are untrained is
similar to relying on the belief that the consumers never lie on their
experience , but how do you know if they have a certain prejudice for
that item which can influence their decision making?

That's half of the reason to include the consumers in the sampling - to
account for inbuilt bias as opposed to trying to eliminate it which if you
do will give you the sales results that could be expected in a hypothetical
universe where everybody bought free from prejudice as opposed to the real
one where individual prejudices factor into the buying decision. In fact,
you could probably suggest certain prejudices by comparing the results of
the trained panel (who we hope will be close to neutral - although they may
have their own prejudices) with that of the consumer panel. Major
discrepancies would suggest a difference in expectations.

Meanwhile, yes, you can always run into the consumer who is going to lie
blatantly on a panel for a variety of reasons. Again, this should be
allowed for as much as possible in the way the panel is set up, the
questions that are asked, etc.

....
Still, given that at the end of the day the goal is to create a
product that will be liked, the consumer must factor into this very
prominently...

Mere customer evaluation not considered real data as that is considered
subjective( and even shallow).

Subjective? Shallow? Possibly. And in fact a lot of buying decisions are
made for those sorts of subjective, shallow reasons. Therefore you can't
design a product on the assumption that people will buy it for objective
reasons. You have to design it to play to the kinds of subjectivities
people actually exhibit. Just because data is subjective doesn't mean it's
any less "real". It just means it's much more difficult to rationalise -
explain away through a logical thought process that one could follow
algorithmically. Again, most people don't follow an algorithm when making a
purchase decision.

....

The grading system for a consumer sensory analysis is not as elaborate
as the from the trained sensory panel.
Therefore its not considered to be of primary importance but only
secondary( or supporting) in nature.

Why should a less-detailed report be given lesser weight? The only
thing that a detailed report gives you automatically is - more detail.

It is the exactness of the results that is supported by details...the
relevance of the mathematical analysis is difficult to refute or to set
aside in favor of a non exact methods or based on emotions of like and
dislike by the consumers.

To be exact, a subjective preference is more difficult either to *prove* or
to *disprove*. Sure, a mathematical analysis in some sense proves something
- something that in fact you in effect already know - but just because
something is more easily shown to be true or false in a Boolean sense
doesn't make it automatically more important. What it does is make it more
deterministic.

For more analogy say to relate to as story about the blind men and the
elephant
The blind men are the customers who only see one point of view of the
elephant. He or she may like or dislike that particular item but due to
limited perspective he cannot comprehend that the elephant is more than
one part he had felt by the absence of sight
Meanwhile a trained test panel is not blind and his or her sensory
faculties are carefully cultivated to be used as an important tool for
the job. So as he has no handicap he can judge what the elephant really
is.

I would emphasize that the trained panel see the elephant in many
angles so its more exacting than feeling only a part of it.

Except that it is the customers who are buying the product. So if the goal
is to sell an elephant, then you have to appeal to the blind customer, not
to the sighted panel. The panel may be able to expound on qualities that
would be important to those who can see, but to the blind man such
qualities might well be immaterial. Yes, the panel has a richer
description, but all that richness of description means little when the
buying decision is being made by somebody with a more impoverished
perspective.

Introducing also an alternative counterexample, I would portray the
customers as people who can see, and who see...an elephant. They don't care
much about the shape of the ears, or the length of the trunk, or any other
feature that the trained person sees and integrates into a description.
What they want is an elephant, pure and simple. In some sense you might say
it's the customer who has the more holistic viewpoint, refusing to see an
object as a collection of distinct subobjects.

Timescales involved aren't important, necessarily, to the similarity of
the process. I'm using the drug example as an illustration of a similar
overall situation - the need to test heretofore unknown products whose
effect is on humans - humans who react in often unpredictable ways that
have to be

Unknown products?....how can that be a confectionery product is
supposed to be known and its not as dangerous or risky if compared to
drug use

It's not that the reaction might be dangerous, it's that it's
unpredictable, precisely because, as you point out, customers are
notoriously subjective. So it's difficult to quantify the response ahead of
time, and the only way to get real data is to experiment on the real
subjects. Drugs are unpredictable in dangerous ways, and now it's not
because the patient's system responds subjectively, but because it responds
with a complex of only partially-understood mechanisms. But in either case
the result is the same - you can't predict the outcome as well as you would
like without field trials.

Trying to have every food product created by the food designer be
tasted by the consumer is a grossly expensive and time consuming...

Most statistical controls have to do with testing samples as opposed to
the entire production run, however, you can't simply translate the
statistical data from one product to a different product, even if the
products are similar. The new product must have its own statistics be
generated and this involves data-gathering.

Your understanding of the statistical tools is unfortunately not
sufficient enough in order to comprehend its importance in food
product development

I've actually not described my background in statistics. FWIW I've done
extensive theoretical and practical work with statistical models - and in
both the sense of developing specific statistical tools for specific
industries, and in developing the overall theory of statistical analysis.
My specialty is in fact in computing technologies using statistical methods
as an alternative to deterministic digital processing. This involves both
an understanding of the ground rules of statistical analysis and a
development of processing models that allow one to implement statistical
functions in computer hardware. Computer hardware itself is also fabricated
using methods of statistical process control. So I've had opportunities to
interact with the field at many levels. Do you have a specific technique in
mind that you think I might not be familiar with (perhaps, for example, one
very much unique to the field you're in)?

The problem is, it's a bit like a new drug, isn't it? If the consumer
has no way to know whether a particular ingredient could be fatal,
should he be expected to take it? Even with a modicum of common sense,
clearly an informed consumer will shun such a product until research
does exist to establish what the risks are. Thus that the deeply
allergic will avoid soy lecithin is a very rational decision indeed.

The consumer and the patient have different frame of mind; the patient
needs to take the drug due to the belief that it will cure his ailment,
but the confectionery consumer will eat the confection ( it may or may
not be to his expectations but its not life threatening like the
patient experience)

Except that in the specific case of lecithin a customer has some reason to
believe the confection *might* be fatal and no hard data to assure him that
it won't. It's for that reason that some people in the soy-allergic group
are scrupulous about avoiding soy lecithin.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

at Wed, 28 Dec 2005 06:12:38 GMT in
.com,
(Chembake) wrote :
at Tue, 27 Dec 2005 10:41:10 GMT in
s.com,
(Chembake) wrote :
...
..
Indeed, that's a possibility, and in fact an excellent marketing strategy
can "rescue" a middling product. But when you get the combined effect of a
well-received product and a good marketing campaign, you can get a sales
bonanza.
By contrast even the slickest marketing can rarely salvage an
honest-to-goodness dud. The simple fact that such duds can and do occur in
the food industry indicates that the evaluation process as you describe it
isn't infalliable.

A product that is destined not to succeed is because of the failure of
the new product developer to assess the product quality that it will
conform with the customer needs which should have been already
anticipated .
But it seldom happens as it’s a team effort and there are a lot of
pragmatic and sensible people in his or her team to offer ideas that
will help the food designer.
Besides a failed product is not only something of sensory quality. It
may fail even if it satisfies many the criteria what the consumer
wants from that product..….but if the developer expectation or much
more the company behind his team expect so much for that particular
product and they have their own projection for its performance and it
it happens it does not reach the standard of performance as in their
best selling products they will just stop selling , bring it back for
more study and see if they can improve it further before they can
relaunch it the same or as a different product name
They consumers may say that it vanished , it means it failed because
the consumer dislike it but its only half the truth
It's very similar to the process of drug research....
....
No, a clinical trial is by definition performed on human patients.
Nope... clinical means analytical and coolly dispassionate in doing
the task but is expected to get results in an objective manner.
Not in the case of the medical industry. In this context the clinical
trial means those trials conducted on live patients...
A food professional rarely worries that the use of such term that
indicate objectivity will be construed as medical in meaning; in fact
it was applied occasionally to describe how the evaluation is to be
done..i.e in clinical manner.
Perhaps not, but since this was a term introduced to refer to my analogy to
the medical/drug research field, in this case the term must be used in the
sense inferred in the medical industry.

In the general sense, but not in particular to a certain developer who
want to see things in clinical fashion as how he or she interpreted the
term.

It sounds like you misinterpreted the analogy, because in the medical
field the purpose of lab work on animals is to understand baseline
characteristics of a drug and establish, often at a microcellular
level, the biological and biochemical processes taking place - the
"objective" side of the analysis where you're trying to break down the
behaviour of the drug into its constituent effects.
Nope
What, exactly, are you disagreeing with here?

It’s the comparison of subjects for ( drug use and confectionery
consumption evaluation).

The relation is between the 2 groups of *test subjects* in the 2 cases -
lab animals vs. professional test panels, human patients vs. consumer
panels. However, and this is important, I'm not equating the external
characteristics of the individual subjects, so that in no way am I trying
to imply that professional testers are like lab animals. What I'm saying is
that the body - the group, performs a similar function whatever their
external characteristics. So that if in the medical case the need is for
somewhat unintelligent creatures as test subjects, and in the food case for
test subjects who are anything but unintelligent, that's wide of the
analogy itself.
..That analogy is funny from the confectioners point of view.
If you tried to extract the same level of detail out of the consumers for
the same product, you could expect larger variances - i.e. a wider overall
statistical distribution of the results, but this would be a reflection of
the level of detail sought, not the accuracy of the analysis that can be
performed. You'd just be trying to obtain finer resolution of the data than
the available sample could accurately reveal. If, on the other hand, you
restricted your questions to simple like/dislike response - the sort of
level a consumer would probably respond on, then you would get probably
equally accurate results - or to be precise in the language, results whose
sample variance accurately reflected the distribution of the entire
population. That's the whole goal of test panels - to estimate, by
sampling, the overall statistical response of the population.


Yes and no responses, like and dislike …. Its not just not accurate
enough to describe the attributes of the food product.
Yes the result can also be statistically evaluated but it will never be
used as the major factor that the product fits the expectation of the
customer.
Likelihood that the consumer may buy something or not because from
rough statistics its shows it so is not a reliable indicator that the
product will succeed in the market.
A lot of marketing establishment have done that on other consumer
products but produced mixed results.
But if the product developed was really well thought of and exhaustive
study was done along the line of the particular customer expectation
then the marketing people will be exerting less effort to promote the
product.

Taking a costumers comment seriously that are untrained is
similar to relying on the belief that the consumers never lie on their
experience , but how do you know if they have a certain prejudice for
that item which can influence their decision making?
That can be gauged by their reaction to the new product and possible
feed back they can submit to the marketing survey.
That's half of the reason to include the consumers in the sampling - to
account for inbuilt bias as opposed to trying to eliminate it which if you
do will give you the sales results that could be expected in a hypothetical
universe where everybody bought free from prejudice as opposed to the real
one where individual prejudices factor into the buying decision.
In fact,
you could probably suggest certain prejudices by comparing the results of
the trained panel (who we hope will be close to neutral - although they may
have their own prejudices) with that of the consumer panel. Major
discrepancies would suggest a difference in expectations.

Difference in expectation is not what the trained test panel and the
untrained consumer panel had in mind.
The former knows from their experience and voluminous data what the
consumer expects and the latter understand that their own expectation
of the product is already taken care of.;even before the taste the
product.
And its pretty common in confectionery manufacture and seldom they
will ask second opinion from somebody outside who does not understand
what that confection is.
There is a wide variety of confectionery products and even me I don’t
like many of them; so are the customers; there is a certain target
client for a certain confectionery item and that will be expected to
patronize them if all their needs for that certain item is filled up.

Therefore Target market is the keyword here
Every food designer have it in their mind before they embark on such
particular food product development
So when customer who is interested on that particular item will buy
the product they are optimistic that they would appreciate it.
Only people who has no affection for that certain confectionery line
will dislike it..
Take it for example supposing I am a consumer...and it happen that
.....
I don’t like licorice but does it affects its sales?,,,,I am certain
that if I am your so called consumer panel I will be the offer a
vehement objection that I dislike it and so if supposing the consumer
panel is composed of equally of people who like and dislikes licorice
how can that judgement be taken as reliable and better than the trained
in house panel( who do it clinically/objectively) in judging a new
licorice product?
As most consumer panel are just randomly selected how can the
evaluators see a reliability that they have amassed the right target
customer for that particular product line?
A lot of consumer panel loves freebies.... and they have nothing to
lose but something to gain.
They may not like the product but out gratitude for the freebies and
compensation for their time and effort they will gladly lie in the
sensory evaluation to please the leader of the consumer panel
evaluation team.
How common is that occurrence of deceptive people whose integrity has a
lot to be desired; but they are consumers and therefore should be
included in your so called consumer panel to ultimately judge the
product that your developing team made exhaustive efforts that the new
item is what the particular target market wants.
Meanwhile, yes, you can always run into the consumer who is going to lie
blatantly on a panel for a variety of reasons. Again, this should be
allowed for as much as possible in the way the panel is set up, the
questions that are asked, etc.

....
Subjective? Shallow? Possibly. And in fact a lot of buying decisions are
made for those sorts of subjective, shallow reasons. Therefore you can't
design a product on the assumption that people will buy it for objective
reasons. You have to design it to play to the kinds of subjectivities
people actually exhibit. Just because data is subjective doesn't mean it's
any less "real". It just means it's much more difficult to rationalise -
explain away through a logical thought process that one could follow
algorithmically.

 Again, most people don't follow an algorithm when making a
purchase decision.

That justifies the reasoning that its not wise to trust the customers
judgement as they are capricious . and most of the time unreliable.

..
I would emphasize that the trained panel see the elephant in many
angles so its more exacting than feeling only a part of it.
Except that it is the customers who are buying the product. So if the goal
is to sell an elephant, then you have to appeal to the blind customer,
not
to the sighted panel. The panel may be able to expound on qualities that
would be important to those who can see, but to the blind man such
qualities might well be immaterial. Yes, the panel has a richer
description, but all that richness of description means little when the
buying decision is being made by somebody with a more impoverished
perspective.

This sums up that if a certain consumer only see a part of the whole
picture then how can their decision be taken into account as reliable
basis that the product is good or bad?
Introducing also an alternative counterexample, I would portray the
customers as people who can see, and who see...an elephant. They don't care
much about the shape of the ears, or the length of the trunk, or any other
feature that the trained person sees and integrates into a description.
What they want is an elephant, pure and simple. In some sense you might say
it's the customer who has the more holistic viewpoint, refusing to see
an
object as a collection of distinct subobjects.
That is what I mean….to see things as a whole….but if you judge it
by the term or like and dislike (which is common in consumer panel )
which are half truths ...it does not say anything to be taken
seriously by a competent evaluator as it does not say anything valid(
if not solid) descriptors that can be used to relate to the
technically trained panel.
Unknown products?....how can that be a confectionery product is
supposed to be known and its not as dangerous or risky if compared to
drug use
It's not that the reaction might be dangerous, it's that it's
unpredictable, precisely because, as you point out, customers are
notoriously subjective. So it's difficult to quantify the response ahead of
time, and the only way to get real data is to experiment on the real
subjects. Drugs are unpredictable in dangerous ways, and now it's not
because the patient's system responds subjectively, but because it responds
with a complex of only partially-understood mechanisms. But in either case
the result is the same - you can't predict the outcome as well as you would
like without field trials.

That is one of the major reason that I don’t want to compare drug
evaluation to confectionery assessment . They are different : a food
item is never comparable to a medicinal product..
It does not give any sense or even logic at all for an equivalent
comparison.

Trying to have every food product created by the food designer be
tasted by the consumer is a grossly expensive and time consuming...
Most statistical controls have to do with testing samples as opposed to
the entire production run, however, you can't simply translate the
statistical data from one product to a different product, even if the
products are similar. The new product must have its own statistics be
generated and this involves data-gathering.
Your understanding of the statistical tools is unfortunately not
sufficient enough in order to comprehend its importance in food
product development
I've actually not described my background in statistics. FWIW I've done
extensive theoretical and practical work with statistical models - and in
both the sense of developing specific statistical tools for specific
industries, and in developing the overall theory of statistical analysis.
My specialty is in fact in computing technologies using statistical methods
as an alternative to deterministic digital processing. This involves both
an understanding of the ground rules of statistical analysis and a
development of processing models that allow one to implement statistical
functions in computer hardware. Computer hardware itself is also fabricated
using methods of statistical process control. So I've had opportunities to
interact with the field at many levels. Do you have a specific
technique in
mind that you think I might not be familiar with (perhaps, for example, one
very much unique to the field you're in)?

Uniqueness..?....maybe not as food product development is an applied
science the statistical tools are related as in other field..

In my field our personnels use statistical tools to improve the
efficiency of product development such as good design of experiments
including robust product design , formulation optimization techniques
,Quality function deployment , and related statistical tools and it
helped us a lot to hit the right product according to the customer
requirement for such. item.

In addition by extensive database of confectionery related matters
including product movement, consumer expectations etc
We already gained an understanding of customer wants and needs of a
certain product and we develop product requirements( and specification
) along that line to ensure that customer wants are being addressed
and the product is likely to succeed once its done.
There is no need to go the customer everytime to ask them if this is
what they want as that is redundant.
Taking consumers as the source of positive feedback before the product
is to be developed is an absurdity.
By the way
If your statistical thinking is correct and just focusing on the taste
aspect alone, then what have been found in the laboratory and pilot
scale studies including sensory analysis already produced positive
result that the majority of the attributes as what the customer
wants ( for that certain product)then why would the consumer will be
expected to say grossly the opposite that is not what they want?
Where is the positive correlation statistically speaking?




Another thing is
Why would the developer rely on the outside feedback to dictate them in
their jobs when they are already aware what the consumer want and they
are developing the products in that direction?
Besides a certain company who has already established reputation for
their confectionery product performance in the market have already
amassed voluminous data what the customer wants for a certain
confectionery product and so any new project is based on that mine of
information..
They have use any available tools in their facility to get things done
in behalf of the customers.

I have seen a lot of product development done by big confectionery
establishment ( not necessarily in the US) that was not even subjected
to much consumer testing but succeeded in the market; and I have seen
some new products from different small confectionery business that
don’t have good technically trained personalities in their workforce
but just an assembly of chefs and kitchen personnel who made
confections and relies on consumer feedback to judge their new product
but to fail ultimately in the market.
I have also seen some chocolatiers who had long experience in the field
that he does not need to ask the customer what they want but he can
create a novel products that really sell!
The big decision if the product will fail or succeed in the market does
not come from the consumers but within the producers ranks; These
people are not crazy to waste resources without having a forethought if
that particular product is doomed to fail .They are certain the know
what the customer wants and they are going in that direction.

Therefore this validates my earlier statement that the consumer panel
is just SUPPORTIVE or CONFIRMATORY in any confectionery related
development.

Except that in the specific case of lecithin a customer has some reason to
believe the confection *might* be fatal and no hard data to assure him that
it won't. It's for that reason that some people in the soy-allergic group
are scrupulous about avoiding soy lecithin.

That is dubious thought....lecithin to be fatal....when similar lipids
exist in the human body?
And it was proven time and time again that is safe...regardless if
comes from soybean or other plant material.
If there is somebody who is really allergic to it is very rare and not
a cause of concern for the confectionery manufacturer.

at Thu, 29 Dec 2005 23:27:53 GMT in
.com,
(Chembake) wrote :

at Wed, 28 Dec 2005 06:12:38 GMT in
s.com,
(Chembake) wrote :
at Tue, 27 Dec 2005 10:41:10 GMT in
ps.com,
(Chembake) wrote :
...
.
....
By contrast even the slickest marketing can rarely salvage an
honest-to-goodness dud. ...
A product that is destined not to succeed is because of the failure of
the new product developer to assess the product quality that it will
conform with the customer needs which should have been already
anticipated .

In theory, that's how it's supposed to work. But in practice, even the
best-researched and thoroughly tested products bomb in the marketplace, and
I've seen plenty of cases where they bombed because of reasons that could
have been caught had the product been subjected to consumer trials. Usually
in those situations it seems obvious after the fact, but this is because
some key factor that had never before been noted becomes visibly self-
evident. No company will make the same mistake again, because now whatever
that mystery factor is will have been determined and integrated into
testing, database, and other systems. However, before the release of the
fatal product, no company knew or perhaps cared about this factor.

But it seldom happens as it’s a team effort

I agree that a total failure is rare.

Besides a failed product is not only something of sensory quality. It
may fail even if it satisfies many the criteria what the consumer
wants from that product..….but if the developer expectation or much
more the company behind his team expect so much for that particular
product and they have their own projection for its performance and it
it happens it does not reach the standard of performance

That's part of what I was referring to in describing the assumptions of the
developer. On paper the product may look as if it's going to be a smash hit
while in practice it might turn out to be only a modest success. Companies
inevitably feel a bit deflated when this happens.

best selling products they will just stop selling , bring it back for
more study and see if they can improve it further before they can
relaunch it the same or as a different product name

Another thing that can happen is that the product was great, but its cost
structure just was too high for the actual market they were able to
capture. This is one of the most common causes of customer mystery - it
becomes a "whatever happened to that great xxx product..." when the truth
is the cost they'd factored in assumed a larger market than actually came
to pass.

It sounds like you misinterpreted the analogy,...
Nope
What, exactly, are you disagreeing with here?

It’s the comparison of subjects for ( drug use and confectionery
consumption evaluation).

Don't be overly distracted by the fact that both of these items are
comestibles. That wasn't really the point. The point was to illustrate
industries where the market research process could justifiably invoke
similar themes.
....

If you tried to extract the same level of detail out of the consumers
for the same product, you could expect larger variances - i.e. a wider
overall statistical distribution of the results, but this would be a
reflection of the level of detail sought, not the accuracy of the
analysis that can be performed. ... If, on the other hand, you restricted
your questions to simple like/dislike response - the sort of level a
consumer would probably respond on, then you would get probably equally
accurate results ...

Yes and no responses, like and dislike …. Its not just not accurate
enough to describe the attributes of the food product.

I would say that it's not a matter of *accuracy*, it's a matter of
*resolution* - how many separate features are you going to try to extract?
With any statistical data set taken with any sample, the resolution of your
data is going to be inversely proportional to the accuracy - so the broader
the conclusion you want to draw, the more accurate, in the sense of being a
good predictor, you can expect your results to be. OTOH sometimes perfectly
accurate results in a very broad classification don't tell you very much.
Depending on the sample taken you can manage different levels of tradeoff
between accuracy and resolution - in the case of the test panel you're
getting excellent resolution at the sacrifice of some accuracy, while in
the case of the consumer group you get good accuracy but lose resolution.
To a certain extent using accuracy and resolution is quibbling over
terminology, but the underlying property - of a tradeoff between 2
different desirable features of the analysis - is what I want to emphasize.

Yes the result can also be statistically evaluated but it will never be
used as the major factor that the product fits the expectation of the
customer.

Why not? If the consumer likes it, we may assume fairly well that it fits
their expectation. The direct evidence of actual response is more solid
than the indirect inference that you could draw based upon an idea that if
a product fell within a certain profile it could be expected to be well-
received.

There is a wide variety of confectionery products and even me I don’t
like many of them; so are the customers; there is a certain target
client for a certain confectionery item and that will be expected to
patronize them if all their needs for that certain item is filled up.

Therefore Target market is the keyword here
Every food designer have it in their mind before they embark on such
particular food product development
So when customer who is interested on that particular item will buy
the product they are optimistic that they would appreciate it.
Only people who has no affection for that certain confectionery line
will dislike it..

Yes, you have hit the nail on the head when you identify the key issue as
target market. Third-party analysis can be much more accurate when
you have a narrow target market, because in that case there's been some
attempt to pre-qualify your audience. Nonetheless, I think in this case a
consumer testing round is valid - you just need to screen your consumers
who are going to participate. Clearly it's futile to survey a broad
spectrum of consumers for a product that's only going to appeal to a
certain clientele - e.g. your licorice example. What's done is that with a
quick round of preliminary questions taken from a broad canvassing, you can
qualify your target consumers - who then form the basis of your consumer
test panel. This is commonly called a "focus group", and although focus
groups, like anything else, are only part of the marketing picture they
have been remarkably successful when used intelligently. I can see how you
might have thought what I was advocating would be foolish if you thought I
meant that one should just randomly pick consumers out of a crowd.

....
As most consumer panel are just randomly selected how can the
evaluators see a reliability that they have amassed the right target
customer for that particular product line?
A lot of consumer panel loves freebies.... and they have nothing to
lose but something to gain.
They may not like the product but out gratitude for the freebies and
compensation for their time and effort they will gladly lie in the
sensory evaluation to please the leader of the consumer panel
evaluation team.

When a company devises their consumer panels like this they have only
themselves to blame for their own poor results. Such a panel will usually
have been assembled to justify a pre-formed conclusion, exactly the
behaviour I was warning against. Yes, a blind consumer panel conducted as
you outline is useless. That's why you don't conduct consumer panels like
that. But if you imagine that all consumer panels must of necessity be this
way then you are missing out on an important market-evaluation tool.

 Again, most people don't follow an algorithm when making a
purchase decision.

That justifies the reasoning that its not wise to trust the customers
judgement as they are capricious . and most of the time unreliable.

IMHO it justifies rather the reasoning that it is not wise to treat
marketing as an algorithmic, deterministic process that you can just follow
procedurally. People are somewhat unpredictable and thus an attempt to
reduce things down to a rigidly determined outcome will inevitably result
in the occasional perplexed surprise when things don't go according to
plan.

.
I would emphasize that the trained panel see the elephant in many
angles so its more exacting than feeling only a part of it.
Except that it is the customers who are buying the product. So if the
goal
is to sell an elephant, then you have to appeal to the blind customer,
not
to the sighted panel. The panel may be able to expound on qualities
that would be important to those who can see, but to the blind man such
qualities might well be immaterial. Yes, the panel has a richer
description, but all that richness of description means little when the
buying decision is being made by somebody with a more impoverished
perspective.

This sums up that if a certain consumer only see a part of the whole
picture then how can their decision be taken into account as reliable
basis that the product is good or bad?

Because it doesn't matter what *you* think. What matters is what the
*customer* thinks. This is true to the extent that even if the customer
were blind and attempting to buy an elephant, and the sighted experts could
aver that what he was feeling was, indeed, an elephant, if that customer
were to think that he was feeling a giraffe, then from the POV of the sale
it would be a giraffe. That's what's meant by the aphorism "the customer is
always right". People tend to take that statement as a policy directive for
customer service, when in fact the meaning is much deeper - it means that a
company must always follow what the customer says he wants, even if from
the company's POV that seems absurd. It's futile to try to second-guess the
customer.

....
it's the customer who has the more holistic viewpoint, refusing to see
an
object as a collection of distinct subobjects.
That is what I mean….to see things as a whole….but if you judge it
by the term or like and dislike (which is common in consumer panel )
which are half truths ...it does not say anything to be taken
seriously by a competent evaluator as it does not say anything valid(
if not solid) descriptors that can be used to relate to the
technically trained panel.

To the technically trained panel what the customer says may be impossibly
vague and meaningless, but the important point is - the trained panel is
not the group who is going to be *buying* the product. So what they think
in terms of what meaning the customer's description has is totally
irrelevant. To give another example: in the film industry it's common for a
film to get great reviews by the critics, who we may assume to have
excellent knowledge. But then it bombs at the box-office, often because
what the critics saw in the film was too obscure and/or inaccessible to
make any sense to the viewing public. Meanwhile, all the critics could
roundly pan a movie which then is a blockbuster, because even though it
contains nothing that the critics see as commendable, it has appeal to the
common man. I would argue that it is the critics who have the wrong
perspective in these cases, not the audience. From the POV of the film's
producers critical acclaim is only valuable insofar as it increases box-
office returns, and likewise a high gross more or less negates any issues
of poor review. If the audience likes it, I feel, the film should be
considered "good" regardless of what the critics say, and it's in fact the
critics who need to adjust their criteria of excellence based on the
popular response - at least insofar as their aim is to provide a service
that indicates to the readership what films they should see if they wish to
be entertained.

Unknown products?....how can that be a confectionery product is
supposed to be known and its not as dangerous or risky if compared to
drug use
It's not that the reaction might be dangerous, it's that it's
unpredictable, precisely because, as you point out, customers are
notoriously subjective. ...

That is one of the major reason that I don’t want to compare drug
evaluation to confectionery assessment . They are different : a food
item is never comparable to a medicinal product..
It does not give any sense or even logic at all for an equivalent
comparison.

No analogy can be "perfect", retaining all the properties of the thing
analogised, for if it did, it would be that very object. The only way one
can, indeed, distinguish separate objects is that they have different
properties. Thus when making an analogy it is necessary to restrict one's
assessment of the similarities to that domain where the analogy is presumed
to apply - the overlap of similar qualities - and not get caught up in how
things are different from one another. Otherwise you'd find there were no
good analogies for anything.

....
If your statistical thinking is correct and just focusing on the taste
aspect alone, then what have been found in the laboratory and pilot
scale studies including sensory analysis already produced positive
result that the majority of the attributes as what the customer
wants ( for that certain product)then why would the consumer will be
expected to say grossly the opposite that is not what they want?
Where is the positive correlation statistically speaking?

It could be different because, as we have both pointed out exhaustively,
the average person doesn't deconstruct a taste into its respective
components. Rather, he sees it as a total object that he "likes" or
"dislikes" subjectively. If you break down a taste into components you
assume that these components are in one sense or another independent - or
at least that you can reduce the taste to a minimal set of independent
attributes that can be considered the "dimensions" of the taste as far as
your analysis is concerned. Unfortunately, *real* taste tends to have
inseparable variables: it's a case of "everything depends on everything".
This kind of problem foils a database because DB's are designed on the
relational model that assumes a 1-to-many hierarchichal relationship - that
you can break down your attributes into that set of independent variables.
Any time you've got the kind of many-to-many mapping that characterises
real taste, your DB will go haywire.

In actual fact, it's not quite a hopeless picture, because in spite of the
fact that taste is so intertwined, you can approximate the picture with a
series of more-or-less independent variables which give at least a
reasonably complete representation of the taste. For many situations this
gives good results, but since it's an approximation, it can't catch every
case. The analysis might then indicate that such-and-such a combination
will be a success, but in fact it's either not so successful as expected,
or in the worst cases a total failure. Nothing was wrong with the analysis,
it's just that if this result comes as a total shock then the people
involved never really fully grasped that they were dealing with
approximations and not with absolute fact.

Another thing is
Why would the developer rely on the outside feedback to dictate them in
their jobs when they are already aware what the consumer want and they
are developing the products in that direction?

If they're not receptive to outside feedback, then I think the developers
are running the risk of becoming closed-minded, convinced of their own
knowledge. Part of being a first-class developer is being able to listen to
and heed external input.

The big decision if the product will fail or succeed in the market does
not come from the consumers but within the producers ranks; These
people are not crazy to waste resources without having a forethought if
that particular product is doomed to fail .They are certain the know
what the customer wants and they are going in that direction.

Being absolutely certain you know what someone else wants sets you up for
the biggest possible embarrassment when you discover that what you thought
they wanted was not what they actually did want. Sometimes you can predict
effectively, sometimes not. Better not to assume that you know, but rather
to believe that you have some ability to predict.
Therefore this validates my earlier statement that the consumer panel
is just SUPPORTIVE or CONFIRMATORY in any confectionery related
development.

Once a consumer panel has been set up with the assumption that you know
exactly how they will respond and are merely trying to verify your
knowledge, you have committed the error I described above as "Such a panel
will usually have been assembled to justify a pre-formed conclusion".

Except that in the specific case of lecithin a customer has some reason
to believe the confection *might* be fatal and no hard data to assure
him that it won't. It's for that reason that some people in the
soy-allergic group are scrupulous about avoiding soy lecithin.

That is dubious thought....lecithin to be fatal....when similar lipids
exist in the human body?

It's not the lecithin in particular that could be fatal, it's the
derivation from soy, which for those truly allergic might be a cause for
concern, which could be fatal.

And it was proven time and time again that is safe...regardless if
comes from soybean or other plant material.
If there is somebody who is really allergic to it is very rare and not
a cause of concern for the confectionery manufacturer.

No, the confectionery manufacturer can't worry about that sort of thing
explicitly, because then you are desiging for an extreme exception.
However, in order to avoid possible legal entanglements, you may need in
today's litigous society to print a disclaimer on your label. Meanwhile if
a confectioner did choose to avoid lecithin it might be because he had
other objections and thus being able to assuage the concerns of the soy-
allergic would merely be a small bonus.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

at Thu, 29 Dec 2005 23:27:53 GMT in
.com,
(Chembake) wrote :


In theory, that's how it's supposed to work. But in practice, even the
best-researched and thoroughly tested products bomb in the marketplace, and
I've seen plenty of cases where they bombed because of reasons that could
have been caught had the product been subjected to consumer trials. Usually
in those situations it seems obvious after the fact, but this is because
some key factor that had never before been noted becomes visibly self-
evident. No company will make the same mistake again, because now whatever
that mystery factor is will have been determined and integrated into
testing, database, and other systems. However, before the release of the
fatal product, no company knew or perhaps cared about this factor.

I don’t know if the product you are talking about is confectionery....
And I know as I had seen a lot of their development works.... and it
seldom fail...


That's part of what I was referring to in describing the assumptions of the
developer. On paper the product may look as if it's going to be a smash hit
while in practice it might turn out to be only a modest success. Companies
inevitably feel a bit deflated when this happens.

Here we go again...you insist your position but you had never been in
actual confectionery product development and manufacturing or have
related experience to substantiate your claim..
You claimed you understand statistical application which is rather
well known.... but it seems now never had any idea how its applied in
food product development and you had never been there...and had any
ideas that the quality aspects of a product are consumer oriented.
Some times I wonder what is wrong with you...
You have no first hand experience in this field then why you argue
based on assumptions and not to accept a true experience from a person
who actually witnessed it ?

If you know nothing about confectionery production including research
and development then better not insist your hypothetical ideas.


best selling products they will just stop selling , bring it back for
more study and see if they can improve it further before they can
relaunch it the same or as a different product name

Don't be overly distracted by the fact that both of these items are
comestibles. That wasn't really the point. The point was to illustrate
industries where the market research process could justifiably invoke
similar themes.
..
But you are generalizing things....and that makes this comparison
appears trivial...
If you are in the proximity of that confectionery industry you will
understand that the field is unique by itself...but its not that
complicated like other food industries.

I would say that it's not a matter of *accuracy*, it's a matter of
*resolution* - how many separate features are you going to try to extract?

Accuracy and resolution....you are becoming more academic...you should
be teaching in the university for first year statistics and not to
dictate your terms to people who had been in thick of that application
in real time.
We know those things well.... for sure. And the consumer is the
motivation for using those tools.


Why not? If the consumer likes it, we may assume fairly well that it fits
their expectation. The direct evidence of actual response is more solid
than the indirect inference that you could draw based upon an idea that if
a product fell within a certain profile it could be expected to be well-
received.

Again you are theorizing... .. ....you have no first hand evidence
based on confectionery experience .... so why insist that it would not
work.?
I am very sure it works as I have experienced it!


Therefore Target market is the keyword here
Every food designer have it in their mind before they embark on such
particular food product development
So when customer who is interested on that particular item will buy
the product they are optimistic that they would appreciate it.
Only people who has no affection for that certain confectionery line
will dislike it..



Yes, you have hit the nail on the head when you identify the key issue as
target market. Third-party analysis can be much more accurate when
you have a narrow target market, because in that case there's been some
attempt to pre-qualify your audience. Nonetheless, I think in this case a
consumer testing round is valid - you just need to screen your consumers
who are going to participate. Clearly it's futile to survey a broad
spectrum of consumers for a product that's only going to appeal to a
certain clientele - e.g. your licorice example. What's done is that with a
quick round of preliminary questions taken from a broad canvassing, you can
..qualify your target consumers - who then form the basis of your
consumer
test panel. This is commonly called a "focus group", and although focus
groups, like anything else, are only part of the marketing picture they
have been remarkably successful when used intelligently. I can see how you
might have thought what I was advocating would be foolish if you thought I
meant that one should just randomly pick consumers out of a crowd.

Again that is good in theory. And in other complicated consumer
products


When a company devises their consumer panels like this they have only
themselves to blame for their own poor results. Such a panel will usually
have been assembled to justify a pre-formed conclusion, exactly the
behaviour I was warning against. Yes, a blind consumer panel conducted as
you outline is useless. That's why you don't conduct consumer panels like
that. But if you imagine that all consumer panels must of necessity be this
way then you are missing out on an important market-evaluation tool.

Again ,Maybe in other business but seldom in confectionery line....

 Again, most people don't follow an algorithm when making a
purchase decision.




IMHO it justifies rather the reasoning that it is not wise to treat
marketing as an algorithmic, deterministic process that you can just follow
procedurally. People are somewhat unpredictable and thus an attempt to
reduce things down to a rigidly determined outcome will inevitably result
in the occasional perplexed surprise when things don't go according to
plan.


That is why its not reliable to risk with such groups....a tried and
tested panel will be a worthwhile examiner of the product than relying
on so called consumer in critical decision making about a product that
is already known.

This sums up that if a certain consumer only see a part of the whole
picture then how can their decision be taken into account as reliable
basis that the product is good or bad?



Because it doesn't matter what *you* think. What matters is what the
*customer* thinks.

Here we go again...
that’s is always in mind of the product designer....what the
consumer wants.
I had re stated in my earlier post in that in the so called
experimental design and consumer oriented QFD ( quality function
deployment) and optimization. The goals are customer oriented and it
had never failed to launch a product that succeeded in the market
despite limited consumer tests.
Again I mention that confectionery formulation is simpler and not
like,drugs sauces, savory items , highly flavored materials where
complexity is the norm and it really needs intensive support from a
well selected consumer panel....but fortunately is seldom applied in
the confections....

....




To the technically trained panel what the customer says may be impossibly
vague and meaningless, but the important point is - the trained panel is
not the group who is going to be *buying* the product. So what they think
in terms of what meaning the customer's description has is totally
irrelevant.

Again you are restating examples that is not being done in the
confectionery development.
You are trying to substantiate your futile reasoning by using non
related products.

To give another example: in the film industry it's common for a
film to get great reviews by the critics, who we may assume to have
excellent knowledge. But then it bombs at the box-office, often because
what the critics saw in the film was too obscure and/or inaccessible to
make any sense to the viewing public.

Film industry....hey....we are discussing specific foods here...?
Why the movies?


No analogy can be "perfect", retaining all the properties of the thing
analogised, for if it did, it would be that very object.

The only way that analogy could be in the right sense is make similar
to the issue being discussed.
Why discuss films, drug research, computer statistics,, etc...
What does it have to do with confectionery?....
Those are extra noises that is complicating the discussion.

....

Any time you've got the kind of many-to-many mapping that characterises
real taste, your DB will go haywire.
\
Then why did it work?.... if from your assumption that it has a
complex relationship?


If they're not receptive to outside feedback, then I think the developers
are running the risk of becoming closed-minded, convinced of their own
knowledge. Part of being a first-class developer is being able to listen to
and heed external input.

Not receptive...?
They are not....but they are not trivial people who will waste their
time to ask somebody things that they already know.


Being absolutely certain you know what someone else wants sets you up for
the biggest possible embarrassment when you discover that what you thought
they wanted was not what they actually did want. Sometimes you can predict
effectively, sometimes not. Better not to assume that you know, but rather
to believe that you have some ability to predict.

Hah....your’e just apprehensive as you had never been in proximity of
a confectionery manufacturer or have never experienced confectionery
product development ..
You are just assuming things .....that had never happened...



Once a consumer panel has been set up with the assumption that you know
exactly how they will respond and are merely trying to verify your
knowledge, you have committed the error I described above as "Such a panel
will usually have been assembled to justify a pre-formed conclusion".

Therefore ....its a waste of time to assemble that panel if the
essential requirements of the product is already established grin

Except that in the specific case of lecithin a customer has some reason
to believe the confection *might* be fatal and no hard data to assure
him that it won't. It's for that reason that some people in the
soy-allergic group are scrupulous about avoiding soy lecithin.

That is dubious thought....lecithin to be fatal....when similar lipids
exist in the human body?



It's not the lecithin in particular that could be fatal, it's the
derivation from soy, which for those truly allergic might be a cause for
concern, which could be fatal.

That’s another assumption....you have to know and understand that in
many countries ....its declared that food items that supposed to
contain an allergen is declared clearly in the labeling
And so far it was effective in warning consumers who are supposed to be
hypersensitive.
For example ...Even if it does not contain nuts its should be declared
that its made in the facility that may use nuts in other products. Or
ingredients that are derived or related to nuts( say some legumes?)



No, the confectionery manufacturer can't worry about that sort of thing
explicitly, because then you are desiging for an extreme exception.
However, in order to avoid possible legal entanglements, you may need in
today's litigous society to print a disclaimer on your label. Meanwhile if
a confectioner did choose to avoid lecithin it might be because he had
other objections and thus being able to assuage the concerns of the soy-
allergic would merely be a small bonus.

Its already part of the labeling code as an example I had related
above...

Alan I think this discussion is not going anywhere....you keep
insisting ad nauseum your premises that were unproven in the
confectionery industry and therefore had no merit.

I will not spend any more time in this worthless discussion.

Happy New Year!