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 dont 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...
thats 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....youre 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.

Thats 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!