CDR Sensory Services: A Good Investment
CDR Sensory Services can provide objective feedback and data on dairy products, which allows for data-based decision making. This is especially valuable when there is a significant potential risk, for example, deciding whether or not to launch a new product. Some companies may rely solely on opinions of internal staff like R&D scientists, marketing professionals or company leadership to make decisions without having objectively collected sensory data available. While it can be viewed as more cost-effective to forego generating structured sensory data, when the decision being made has a large financial impact, such as changes to a flagship product, it may be more than worth it to get outside, objective sensory analysis.
“The risk of it backfiring or missing something could be fairly significant depending on how large the change is,” said CDR Sensory Services Coordinator Brandon Prochaska. “If it’s a cost savings thing or a new product launch, there’s a lot riding on that decision. Making the most of it with actual data can be really helpful.”
For example, Prochaska said one client utilized CDR’s consumer panel services. The company felt confident in the product but feedback from the consumer panel was clear that the color of the product didn’t meet expectations. The company was able to use the data from the CDR consumer panel to adjust their product before it was launched and avoided a potentially devastating misstep.
Saving Employees’ Time
Companies may opt to utilize their own staff to conduct internal sensory testing. When companies use only internal employees to conduct sensory testing, there is a risk that these employees have less time and are less effective at their regular duties. Prochaska said companies should consider a couple different aspects when considering whether or not to ask internal staff to be their sole sensory panelists.
- Are the sensory results you’re getting with an internal sensory panel valuable and meaningful to your customers? (i.e. are your results seen as objective and non-biased?)
- Do your employees have enough time not only to evaluate products, but also participate in sensory training and calibration throughout the year? Or is the employees’ time better spent doing other things?
Prochaska said sensory testing isn’t cheap but oftentimes when he works with companies, he finds that some of the internal sensory analysis programs companies are using aren’t as effective as they could be. One option would be to partner with CDR Sensory Services to free up the time of internal staff. The savings realized from the increased productivity could then easily pay for the periodic and on demand sensory testing CDR can provide.
CDR Sensory Services Tests
Consumer Testing: Consumer panels are conducted in CDR’s newly constructed addition to Babcock Hall on the UW-Madison campus. Studies can be conducted in various formats including central location tests in CDR’s 6 new sensory booths, focus groups, or in-home use tests. Data is collected with the end goal of measuring preferences, degree of liking (hedonics) or consumer acceptance. Tests are conducted using CDR’s diverse panelist database of over 2,000 individuals from the Madison area. The list of consumer panelists continues to grow as CDR pulls from the greater Dane County area and University of Wisconsin-Madison (24,000 UW staff, about 50,000 UW students, and 570,000 Dane County residents).
Benefits:
- Generate meaningful intelligence from consumers who actually purchase and enjoy that particular product or category.
- Gauge likelihood of product acceptance and success of a new product or concept.
- Understand what drives liking and purchase decisions in the retail environment.
Difference (Triangle) Testing: This type of testing answers the question whether or not a difference exists between two or more products. It statistically indicates whether the products are sufficiently similar, or significantly different. All testing is done under controlled conditions including the preparation, presentation, and the environment. This ensures the only variable coming into play is the samples themselves.
Benefits:
- Statistically sound method to determine if overall difference exists between samples.
- Simple methodology that is easy to understand and quick to execute.
- Uses panelists who are proven differentiators to ensure rigorous evaluation of the samples.
- Can find meaningful data about the samples with fewer panelists than consumer testing
Descriptive Sensory Analysis: Descriptive sensory analysis offers a statistically robust method of identifying key attributes of a product or monitoring their changes over time. This is done using panelists who have been extensively trained to detect and quantify appearance, flavor, and texture attributes in an objective and repeatable manner. CDR’s descriptive panel utilizes a hybrid of QDA and Spectrum methodology. CDR employs about 20 dedicated external descriptive panelists to ensure repeatable and quality results.
Benefits:
- Can evaluate a single product without need for references or controls.
- Can holistically compare several products across all attributes of the sensory experience.
- Statistically meaningful data, with quantifiable and repeatable scaling.
- Methods allow for some comparison to previous and future tests using the same methods.
- Purely objective measurement of characteristics with precisely controlled conditions.
Expert Screening: CDR dairy product experts, many of whom have judged at national and international competitions, can evaluate products to generate key insights. Thanks to their advanced expertise and years of experience in judging, they can also help in troubleshooting, identifying defects and suggesting areas of improvement for various products.
Benefits:
- Economical pricing.
- Relatively short lead time.
- Offers contextual feedback beyond objective measurements such as potential manufacturing improvements, root causes of defects, or whether performance is typical.
New CDR Service - Shelf Life Studies
CDR now has three climate chambers that allow for CDR to conduct shelf life testing for dairy foods and beverages. The product is held in the chambers at a specified condition for a predetermined amount of time and then the product is evaluated using trained panelists periodically to determine what the shelf life for the product is. The chambers can control both temperature and humidity and can be programmed to carry out custom programming to simulate product abuse in the supply chain or accelerated shelf life conditions.
There are many potential benefits of conducting shelf life studies of a product. Prochaska said there are two common things that happen in food and beverage manufacturing. One is that if a company makes a product that is similar to another product, the manufacturer will use the same shelf life without validating their product. Of course, this is an economical solution but if a company can get an additional 10% or longer added to the shelf life of their product; that can add significant value. Extending shelf life can also be a source of product differentiation (i.e. someone not going to want to buy something with 2 weeks of shelf life, they want something with 4 weeks left).
In other cases, shelf life was perhaps established a long time ago and may be overdue to be re-validated.
“Maybe you established the shelf life when the product was first released and since then you’ve made umpteen formulation changes and it’s made at a different plant now and the packaging was updated. So shelf life studies are valuable in validating your shelf life remains as least as good as it originally was and possibly even extending it out,” Prochaska said.
CDR Shelf Life studies can provide data on what consumers think of their product at the end of their shelf life as well. This can be meaningful data and also an indicator of whether extending shelf life may be feasible. That can, in turn, provide more flexibility within the supply chain.
CDR’s climate chambers are large (5.5 cubic feet) and can handle large formats like a 40 lbs block of cheese or large bags of dairy powders.
Working with CDR Sensory Services
CDR Sensory Services provide clients with valuable data and insights into how their products behave or are perceived. These “dividends” make the cost associated with sensory testing, truly a worthy investment to make.
“It can be the difference between a successful product launch and a failure,” Prochaska said.
Smaller companies and/or entrepreneurs that are interested in employing CDR Sensory Services but may not have the funds to do so may qualify for a grant through the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance (DBIA). The DBIA’s Dairy Business Builder Grant program is available to small-to-medium size farmers or processors aimed at diversifying on-farm activity, creating value-added products, and enhancing dairy by-products or export programs. Awards of up to $100,000 in reimbursable grants will be made. For more information, visit cdr.wisc.edu/dbia.
If you are interested in learning more about CDR Sensory Services, visit https://www.cdr.wisc.edu/sensory
If you are interested in getting a quote from CDR Sensory Services, visit. https://www.cdr.wisc.edu/sensory-quote
This article appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of the Dairy Pipeline.