An Austrian client was looking for growth options in one of his product categories.

In order to determine relevant market segments, we suggested a sensory analysis to understand, if there would be “taste segments” within this rather basic food category which were not sufficient served yet. Next to price and ingredients taste could hint to unserved and hence growth segments.

To conduct the research we co-operated with a provider of sensory analyses. The analyses was carried out as a quantitative descriptive analysis, in which each product was categorized by various dimensions of taste. Eventually we had X datapoints (number of products) * Y (taste categories) * Z (number of participants) to define rather differentiating taste segments within this product category.

To reduce the number of variables we used the factor analysis, with which we were able to group certain taste categories into one factor (a group of taste categories). Given these new categories, a preference-profile of each participants was determined, as participants also stated, which product they like most (on a scale from 1 to 10). These preference profile were grouped into segments through a Cluster analysis with various agglomeration methods. FInally, we were able to derive rather differentiating segments and were able to identify underserved segments.

 

Based on these segments identified we were able to start discussions with the R&D department on how a new product could look like.