Need to know how your product stacks up against the competition and why one product is preferred over another? Category appraisal can answer those questions.

Category Appraisal combines consumer product testing with detailed product characteristics from our descriptive panel.

It’s useful when consumers can tell us what they like or don’t like, but cannot articulate enough detail to guide product development.

Here’s how a typical Category Appraisal works:

Here’s an interesting article about supertasters and how their preferences in other food categories could be used to help them choose wines. While it’s truly a fun marketing approach – who wouldn’t want to discuss chocolate and coffee preferences over a glass of wine 😉 – we definitely would like to further explore this idea with some sensory research.

We sometimes hear from our clients that they know they should “do sensory research,” but they are not quite sure how it fits or what it does. So for those of you who are also wondering about it, here’s our Sensory 101.

What it does

Sensory research identifies the unique & compelling characteristics of the product. It also ensures that those attributes remain consistent and continue to deliver against consumer expectations.

How it’s used

• Provides objective, data-driven assessment products
• Uncovers how the product’s attributes are perceived
• Identifies how to optimize the product for the desired usage experience
• Ensures consistency throughout ingredient or manufacturing changes
• Benchmarks against the competitive set

If you’re heading to Quirks Chicago next week, please stop by and visit with us. We’ll be at Booth #802, co-exhibiting with our sister brand, Blueberry.

Please stop by our booth #105 at Quirks Brooklyn next week.

We’ll have fun giveaways, a raffle and some awesome teammates to greet you!

A quick reminder about our capabilities:

• Sensory research – flexible sensory research leveraging our own expert panels
• Client-site sensory services – we recruit, train and manage your sensory panel
• Exceptional facilities – 23 product testing booths, 12 sink booths, commercial test kitchens and abundant product prep space.
• Global solutions – through our network of validated partners, we can standardize your global sensory research and provide one cohesive sensory research report.

Contact us for a competitive bid on your next project!

We recently explored how gender and color impact product perceptions for laundry detergent.

Interestingly, we discovered that the main effect was scent-related but that there was a two-way interaction between gender and color.  Although women’s attitudes were not different from men’s for the clear or blue detergent, they were more negative than those of men for the green detergent.

Click below to enlarge.

So many of our clients come up from Manhattan, we thought it made sense to quickly share how easy it is to get here from there!

From Grand Central Terminal in New York City: Take the New Haven Line to Mamaroneck Station.  This is about a 40-minute train ride. During peak hours, the train runs every 30 minutes.  Once at Mamaroneck Station, take a cab or Uber to our office. It is about a 6 min drive to our facility.

For detailed driving directions, visit our ISR Directions & Map page.