Sensorial Review — Using TagTaste to find market readiness of your products
An incredibly simple way to get the pulse of your target market
What is a Sensorial Review?
When we consume a product, it stimulates our five senses of Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound. The stimulation thus captured is transmitted to our brain where it gets mixed with the memories (past experiences) that build our perceptions towards that product.
At TagTaste, we capture these experiences in the form of a carefully designed questionnaire that the tasters fill while consuming (reviewing) the products.
Why should we conduct a Sensorial Review?
Consumer preference
The most obvious objective of such a review is to find the preference of the consumers. Instead of directly asking whether they liked the product or not, we take the tasters through a questionnaire that ultimately leads to the question of their overall preference on a 7-point scale.
7-point scale: Dislike extremely, Dislike moderately, Dislike slightly, Can’t say, Like slightly, Like moderately, Like extremely
Inputs for R&D
The inputs thus obtained are unique and provide deeper insight into why a product was perceived by its consumers in a certain way. It is recommended that the product is benchmarked against similar products from either competing brands or our own portfolio.
The 7-point preference score compares the product vis-a-vis its competition and the detailed questionnaire provides the actionable insight on the scope of improvement.
It makes business sense
Food & Beverages have a very short shelf life because of the perishability of their products. On top of that, food is highly localized i.e. the palate of consumers varies significantly from city to city. A product that is doing good in Delhi may have an average acceptance in Kolkata.
Good understanding of our target market and their timely feedback can save millions of dollars in inventory and logistics costs. Sensorial analysis can provide feedback in an extremely efficient and cost-effective manner.
How do we capture a Sensorial Review?
Using the right Questionnaires
The right questionnaire to capture a sensorial review is designed around five senses and is filled in the manner in which customers consume the products. For instance, questions on Appearance come first, followed by Aroma, then Taste and so on.
- Appearance— Here we observe color, visual impression & texture.
- Aroma— Here we identify specific aromas and their intensities.
- Taste — Here we identify Basic & Ayurvedic tastes and their intensities.
- Aromatics to Flavor — Aromatics is aroma arising from the food inside the mouth. Aromatics and taste work together to form flavor. Here we first identify aromatics and then address flavor.
- Oral Texture — Here we observe the joy, pain or displeasure caused by the food inside the mouth as it touches the lips, teeth, palate, tongue, and throat during oral processing.
Overall Preference: Here we evaluate the product in its entirety and write comments in our words.
Case study: Burger
Let’s say that you are about to launch a new Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) to sell burgers. But before going public, you want to check how your burgers (especially, the entry-level veg burger) perform vis-a-vis your competition. So, you decide to use TagTaste services for the same.
Based on your analysis, you want to benchmark your veg burger against (say) Veg Zinger from KFC and Crispy Veg from Burger King.
Call to tasters
With the above inputs, our team creates a Collaboration Post on TagTaste for the community to participate.
Interested tasters apply to the collaboration. Our admins then shortlist them based on their background and demographics requirements. For instance, let’s say your target audience consists largely of young adults with a good mix of male & female customers from Delhi. So, we select:
- A sample size of 5 experts (chefs/food professionals) and 50 consumers
- 50% Male: 50% Female
- 25% 18–21 years : 60% 21–35 years : 15% 35–55 years
- Location: New Delhi
The shortlisted tasters are called to a central location for the reviews which are recorded on our Android and iOS apps.
All selected tasters are trained on Sensorial analysis by our experts. They consist of 10,000+ professionals (including master chefs, industry veterans, and culinary students) from 70+ cities across India. We’ve helped 200+ companies with product reviews and development so far.
Sample Report
Once the responses are recorded, the reports are automatically generated by our servers. Here’s a glimpse of a report developed with the publicly available data of Crispy Veg burger from Burger King (6th Aug 2019) (40 reviews). The detailed report is available here.
Sensogram
It’s a visual representation of taster’s ratings on a 7-point scale. The red area is the rating given by tasters while the grey area is the scope of improvement.
Product Highlights
- Overall product experience: 5.17 / 7
- The product has got fairly balanced ratings as seen in above Sensogram
- The build of a burger i.e. the manner in which ingredients are stacked on top of each other is extremely crucial for its success (more on this in our future blogs). In this case, only 65% of tasters reported it to be fine.
- 72.5% found crispy patty while 65% of them found crispy onions. For an entry-level burger, maintaining this standard is extremely crucial.
- 60% of the tasters found the burger to be clean and fun to hold.
- 70% of the tasters found the burger to be mildly Salty (3.43 / 7) while 52% of them found it to have moderately pungent spices (4.00 / 7).
- 87.5% of tasters reported a pleasant aftertaste while 72.5% of them said that the length of the aftertaste was sufficiently long.
- 65% of tasters found the patty to be contributing to the overall flavor and had a tender feel inside the mouth.
- 80% of the tasters said that the burger satisfies their basic senses.
The reports of your product, as well as that of your competition, is then analyzed by our experts. A good preference score (5.00 and above) coupled with balanced questionnaire reviews provides the necessary confidence level for the market launch. However, a below-par preference score can provide direction to the areas of improvement. Experts from our network can also help in improving your products further.
In the end…
Sensorial Analysis is one of the most potent tools to not only gauge the market readiness of your products but also provide precise & actionable insights. You can use these tools to establish your product superiority or as a basic quality check of your existing product line. Much more can be deduced by dissecting our reports based on the gender, age, and location of the respondents.
So, the next time when you are developing a product, reach out to us at contact@tagtaste.com. We would be happy to help.
