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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

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