A. Giboreau (1), R. Haller (2)
1) Adriant, Paris, France
2) Danone, Palaiseau, France


In the future, the only brands that will be successful are ones which stimulate a maximum of the five senses, and not only the senses of seeing and hearing. Our senses are our link to memory and can tap right into our emotions. A fresh spring day has a particular smell to it, and manufacturers try to bottle this feeling of life's renewal. Then the marketers use the emotional connection to spring to sell their dishwashing liquids, soaps, and so on.
The present work aims at setting-up an operational protocol to create innovative products using a sensory marketing approach.

The methodology is made up of two phases :

(1) The qualitative phase (two focus groups) explored the concerned food universe and the possible variations of the product quality over the 5 senses from the concept X*. Following this phase, a limited number of factors were selected for sample formulation: colour intensity, flavouring, opacity, label touch and pack size. Then, a statistical experimental design was used to select a partial number of all combinations to be tested quantitatively.

(2)The quantitative phase (N = 150) consisted in an hedonic evaluation of each scenario of the experimental design. The results showed that the main factors which drive consumer preference are colour intensity and flavouring. Pack size and label touch are taken into account by the consumer to a lesser extend. The ideal product, it is to say the most appreciated and the one that is in best accord  with the concept X had identified characteristics regarding colour, flavour, pack size and label touch.

This experiment showed the feasibility of the proposed multisensory design method based on a qualitative exploration of the concept and a quantitative selection of the best combination. It has now to be applied to other product universes for validation.