Consumer and Market Research
Sensometrics
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Sensometrics is a branch of statistics that involves the use of statistical methods in sensory and consumer science. It is gaining importance in today’s world because of heightened consumer awareness of aspects such as color, aroma, and texture in consumer purchase decisions.
Every manufacturer needs to know how their products are perceived by the consumers, to remain competitive. This is why the measurement of product experience is vital. While the quality of a product is based on chemical and physical data, sensory data plays an important part towards determining the success of a product, especially in the food, medicine, and consumer packaged goods sectors. Product development usually aims to relate sensory and consumer data to chemical and physical data. Sensory methods measure quality characteristics of products that cannot be assessed by physical or chemical tests.
Sensory data is obtained when human responses (sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing) to product attributes (such as crunchiness, texture, and saltiness for a product like potato chips) are measured. Sensometrics uses mathematical and statistical methods to measure, interpret, and evaluate these responses.
Sensometrics requires that a group of panelists is set up and trained in the use of sensory techniques and statistical modeling of sensory data. CAMO’s Panelist Monitoring and Tracking tool helps monitor the consistency of each panelist and their agreement with other panelists to result in reliable data.
Sensory and Consumer Analysis
Sensory data can be effectively used to analyze consumer preferences for particular features in a product. For instance, consumer attitudes towards meatless products can be assessed to determine specific markets among consumers.
A category review could be conducted to determine core users of competitive products and core users of the company's products. Tabulated data from the rest of the survey could be used to better understand consumer characteristics and the differences between consumers.
Design of Experiments (DoE)
Design of Experiments (DoE) is a structured, organized method that is used to determine the relationship between the different factors (Xs) affecting a process and the output of that process (Y). This method was first developed in the 1920s and 1930s by Sir Ronald A. Fisher the renowned mathematician and geneticist.
Design of Experiments involves designing a set of ten to twenty experiments, in which all relevant factors are varied systematically. When the results of these experiments are analyzed they help to identify optimal conditions, the factors that most influence the results, and those that do not, as well as details such as the existence of interactions and synergies between factors.
DoE methods require well-structured data matrices. When applied to a well-structured matrix, analysis of variance delivers accurate results, even when the matrix that is analyzed is quite small. Today, Fisher's methods of design and analysis are international standards in business and applied science. They are an integral part of The Unscrambler® one of CAMO’s most innovative and widely used products.
Design of experiments is widely used in research and development, where a large proportion of the resources go towards solving optimization problems. The key to minimizing optimization costs is to conduct as few experiments as possible. DoE requires only a small set of experiments and thus helps to reduce costs.
DoE is used in the following areas:
- Development of new products and processes.
- Optimizing the quality and performance of an existing product.
- Optimizing existing manufacturing processes in the following industrial areas:
- Chemicals
- Drugs and Pharmaceuticals
- Food and Beverages
- Cosmetics
- Paints
- Polymers
What is Chemometrics?
Chemometrics is a statistical technique that can directly correlate quality parameters or physical properties to analytical instrument data collected from food products.
Using chemometrics, patterns in the data can be modeled; and the models can then be routinely applied to future data in order to predict the same quality parameters. The result of the chemometrics approach is an efficiency gain in assessing product quality. The process can lead to more efficient laboratory practices or automated quality control systems.
The primary requirements to perform chemometrics are an appropriate instrument and a suitable software product to interpret the patterns in the data. Chemometrics software is designed to recognize patterns in virtually any type of multi-dimensional analytical data. Chemometrics can be used to speed up methods of development and make the use of statistical models for data analysis routine. Specifically, the application of chemometrics to the quality control of food or beverage products results in:
- Comprehensive monitoring of product quality and changes in process parameters.
- Routine monitoring of raw material quality including assessment of geographical /varietal origin.
- Replacement or augmentation of sensory evaluation with analytical instrument systems.
- Efficient detection of product adulteration, contamination and substitution.
The findings related to a product are documented and then correlated to sensory information by other chemometric methods. The resultant statistical model can be used in on-line or routine applications to predict flavor characteristics of unknown samples via the same instrumented technique.
The Unscrambler® CAMO’s most comprehensive chemometrics package, is designed specifically for Windows 98/NT/2000/XP.
The product offers:
- Prediction, classification, data exploration, pattern recognition methods, and mixture analysis under a single umbrella.
- A simple to use yet powerful interface facilitates interacting with raw and processed data.
- Support for many common instrument and data exchange file formats make importing data easy.
- Ability to create thousands of subsets from a single data file, allowing the user to exercise many different “what-if” scenarios without having to collect additional data.
- All calculated products are saved in a single file and can be retrieved and manipulated via a unique data handling system.
- Options for the transfer of calibration to allow spectra to be adjusted appropriately for prediction with a model from another source.
The Unscrambler® has been the leading chemometrics product on the market for spectroscopic applications since 1986.