I recently had the pleasure to attend the annual Sensory Science Group Conference, which was this year held at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham on 18 May and chaired by Cindy Beeren from Leatherhead Food Research. This conference is always a great opportunity to learn about new developments in the field of sensory science and to meet up with colleagues.
The topic of this year was a slice of sensory – and with this interesting name, I was very excited to find out what this was all about and thought to report back to you in industry! I was lucky enough to get selected by the organising team to present a workshop on difference testing – a bit more on this difference testing workshop follows below – but first, you may want to know, what else was covered? The day covered a wide range of sensory topics from innovative sensory methodologies right through to consumers’ psychology and emotional response.
After a warm welcome from Joanne Hort, who looked back at the last and first time that this annual Sensory conference was held in Nottingham (and lots of people were dressed up as Robin Hood!), we were given a summary of the IFST Sensory Science Group’s successes over the past year, which included the launch of the Register of Professional Sensory Scientists (RSensSci).
The first two presentations used innovative techniques: Lucy White from Sensory Dimensions and Hannelize van Zyl from Heineken respectively presented on Implicit/Explicit Measures and Facial Expression of Emotions. Due to some projects that Leatherhead is working on this year, I was particularly interested in these presentations. Alternative methods to classic sensory tests are always interesting in a field like Sensory Science where everything is moving and evolving so fast. Without being able to really replace current methodologies, it appears that these novel techniques for sensory can be useful to add an extra layer of information. The implicit measures presentation was very interesting and further work is planned to more fully understand the potential in the methodology. Facial recognition is gaining interest in Sensory Analysis but unfortunately, in the case study presented, only a small percentage of respondents’ data was actually usable; it seemed that the consumers in the study did not express their emotions facially.
Tom Goderis from Insites Consulting UK presented on innovative consumer research, in particular where they are interested in consumer activated companies, such as using online communities, to obtain continuous consumer feedback. This was followed by five short poster presentations, which gave a great insight in many different topics – each person presenting only for 5 minutes. This provided a nice taster to go and speak with the presenters during the lunch time that followed. Among the poster presentations, some really interesting talks including our very own Dr Monee Shamsher (Genetic research scientist at Leatherhead Food Research) presenting how our genes influence not only the way we taste but also our perception of ideal food. Also, Christine Kelly from the charity Fifth Sense explained some different methods to recover the sense of smell used for people having anosmia. Peter Burgess (Campden BRI), Martha Skinner (Nottingham University) and Rocio Dorado (University of Madrid), each also gave some interesting thoughts on their research areas: integrating packaging with product experience, exploring the perceptual quality of metallic compounds (trying to answer the question is metallic a taste or are there aromatic components?) and first position effect on the emotional response of consumers (using chocolate and beer).
Lunchtime also gave us the opportunity to visit some of the stands, especially the pplinsights stand as they had some chocolate related quizzes with alcoholic related prizes!!
A workshop by Chris Lukehurst from the Marketing Clinic explored consumer liking, starting from early development and evolutionary process of perception of foods. Using baby wet wipes, Chris explored our differences in responses -which for this product varied from thoughts from dirty nappies (obviously a memory triggered response from a parent) to clean and alcohol aromas.
My workshop on difference testing’s aim was to focus on a practical exercise with the delegates. Several small working groups were formed and each had to come up with an approach on how to solve an industry issue using difference testing methodology. Both difference and similarity testing were covered by the industry issue examples so it made for a great discussion. All the delegates were involved and some very interesting solutions were found by several groups!
During the last presentation of the day we learnt that there is still room for improvement in the way the industry currently works with self-reported emotions. As David Thompson from MMR explained, most of our decision processes happen below the level of consciousness; consumer metrics don’t tell the whole story. This was encapsulated by David Brooks’ quote “The brain and mind are not the same thing.” David went on to describe various MMR approaches to ‘measure what really matters’.
The day was finished off with the announcement of the best poster, which was won by Christine Kelly, and then the organisers from the IFST Sensory Science Group were thanked for all their hard work. It was a great day and definitely a good overview of sensory techniques. Looking forward to next year’s conference already…
Antoine Goupil de Bouille, Senior Sensory Scientist, Leatherhead Food Research