Abstract
A full-service sensory evaluation program is more than a department that merely fulfills test requests. Such technical services are critically important, of course, to provide information about product development and optimization of sensory attributes. Routine testing can also provide support for questions of quality maintenance—in sensory quality control, shelf-life testing and other common services. However, many sensory departments, especially those in larger and forward-looking companies, are also providing strategic research and long-term research guidance to their product development and marketing clients. The distinction between strategic and tactical research is obviously based on a military metaphor. Tactical research concerns all of the focused activities aimed at launching new products and positioning or repositioning existing brands. This is where the bulk of corporate expenditures on product development and marketing research are aimed. Funds are spent on positioning and pricing studies and on advertising research before and after the launch to gain a point or two of market share (Laitin and Klaperman, 1994). However, these funds are not well spent if the bigger picture of the product category and a long-range view of consumer needs and trends are not seen. Research efforts may have resulted in a better apple when consumers really wanted a better orange. At the tactical stage, the company is stuck with the apple and has to do its best with it (Laitin and Klaperman, 1994). To avoid this kind of problem, some companies use innovative research techniques such as perceptual mapping. Strategic research may also identify consumer trends and demographic changes, and uncover new product or even whole new business opportunities (Von Arx, 1986; Miller and Wise, 1991).
Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.... Therefore I say: “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.”—Sun Tau, The Art of War (Ch. 3, v. 4, 31).
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Lawless, H.T., Heymann, H. (1999). Strategic Research. In: Sensory Evaluation of Food. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7843-7_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7843-7_18
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