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Sensory science has proven to be useful in a wide range of disciplines especially in the food industry. For the food industry, it is useful in shelf life studies, quality control, product development and optimization, flavor profiling, and determining the factors driving consumer preferences. See previous blog on the importance of sensory science in the food processing industry to find out more. Although the food industry might be one of the largest if not the largest in the world, it is not the only industry where sensory science has received massive application. Sensory science is currently being applied in areas such as personal care, household care, cosmetics, flavors, fragrances and even the automotive industry. Are you wondering where you can do all these sensory tests? UG SENLAB is the right place.
Sensory evaluation is a sophisticated market research and decision making tool that can be utilized in quality assessment throughout products lifecycle to enable consumer led product design and decision making. It is widely used by major companies in the developed markets. Its use continues to grow especially in smaller companies for new product categories because it is recognized as a necessary tool for competitive advantage. The use of sensory science by marketing departments will continue to grow, particularly in leveraging the link between product sensory properties and emotional benefits for the use in brand advertising.
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Many nonfood products are complex due to the different materials that are mostly used to make them. They can be used in diverse ways, in different contexts and can withstand diverse conditions over several hours, days, months or years unlike food (unless specially preserved). As a result, central location tests are less frequently used for some of these products and home use tests are mostly preferred. This would be the case for cosmetics, shaving blades, paper tissues, gym equipment etc. For some products however, re-creating natural environments may be very necessary to better control testing conditions. Some companies have thus set up individual booths equipped with showers, laundry machines etc. in order to achieve this feat.
In addition, memories and associations may vary from one context to another. For example, a given strawberry-based home fragrance may evoke totally different mental associations depending on whether it is smelled in the kitchen, the living room, or the bathroom. Advances in other fields such as genomics, brain imaging and instrumental analysis coupled with sensory science provide a greater understanding of these perceptions. Many nonfood products interact with the physical context in which they are used and may thus behave differently from one context to another. This is seen in many cosmetic products like skin care, hair care, makeup products that will change depending on room temperature and humidity. Due to this, cosmetic companies sometimes use climate chambers for sensory evaluation of products that are sensitive to these variations.
The next time you use your toiletries, cosmetics, cars or clothing think about the sensory evaluation process it may have gone through or think about the sensory process you may run on them. Click here request a sensory test for both your food and non-food product.