On April 13th, Hélène ALLAIN (sensory evaluation manager) gave a conference at a symposium co-organized by the British Feeding & Drinking Group and the Paul Bocuse Institute in Lyon, on feeding and drinking consumers’ patterns and trends. Hélène’ talk was focused on an innovative consumers’ preferences approach developed by MANE's consumer insight team.
Flavour testing in the past has limited itself to hedonic questions and verbal rating scales making it sometimes difficult to discriminate between one flavour and another. To overcome these problems, MANE has developed an innovative approach using the principles of the psychology of cross-modal associations, which allows us to design the emotional profiles of various flavours.
This approach was illustrated by a case-study on vanilla ice-cream from the French, German & UK market showing that, for a same liking score, consumers could associate different vanilla ice-cream market products to totally different emotional universes. This approach is an added-value for a better product differentiation and for better choices in product development, in accordance with brand images and positioning.