Penalty Analysis
A taste test can result in a variety of outcomes. You could meet consumer expectations and receive a positive score, but perhaps your product does not entirely meet expectations. You might wonder: “Why did my product receive a low score?” “What should I improve first?” And “Maybe we should change the colour of this product?” These questions can be answered in our Penalty Analysis.
A penalty analysis determines your ‘penalty’ for low scores in certain diagnostic aspects. These are the aspects that get responses in the ‘just right’ range.
For example: perhaps sixty percent of the test subject thinks your product isn’t crispy enough. Their score of your product can be 1,6 points lower than that of those who thought your product’s crispiness was ‘just right’. The same test might show that thirty percent of the test subjects thought your product wasn’t sweet enough. These might give your product a score that’s 1,2 points lower than those who thought its sweetness was ‘just right’. In this example, the first aspect to be adjusted will be the product’s crispiness.
A Penalty Analysis provides a quick insight into which aspects of the product you can optimise to achieve higher points with the taste testers. The penalty analysis is also very helpful because you don’t have to waste energy on aspects that barely improve your product.
A Penalty Analysis is especially useful if you have included ‘liking’ questions in your consumer survey, in combination with one or more diagnostic aspects such as ‘just right’ questions. If you’ve received results such as ‘21 percent think the product is too dark’, ‘33 percent think the product is too salty’ and ‘42 percent think the product is too runny’, you might wonder how much impact they will have, and what aspects should be adjusted first. That’s when the penalty analysis comes in handy.
We can perform a penalty analysis for any future tests, as well as for tests results that you may already have. For more information, please contact us.
