Product evaluation with consumers and with trained panels: blind tests against competitors, sensory profiling, acceptance and preference tests. It is the technique that stops you launching a reformulation because the boardroom liked it, when in a blind test it loses against the very product it was meant to replace.
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The design is defined: blind, comparative or sequential monadic.
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Presentation is controlled — order, temperature, coding — to avoid bias.
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It is fielded at a central location or in-home, depending on how the product is consumed.
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Acceptance, preference and the attributes that explain them are analysed.
Cases where it fits
What you get
Because they are two different questions. The blind test tells you whether the product competes on its own; the branded test tells you how much your brand adds to or subtracts from that evaluation. The most useful approach is to run both and compare: the gap between them is, literally, the value of your brand on the palate.
Tell us what decision you are facing and we will tell you which study answers it.
