What expectations do consumers have for your product? How is the competition positioned? Mérieux NutriSciences brings nearly 30 years’ experience in creating customized consumer research solutions to support your innovation process.

We offer both quantitative and qualitative testing methodologies as well as specific tools to help you understand consumer attitudes, preferences and drivers of purchase decisions.

Consumer research services

Diagnostics, hedonics and preference tests can be selected individually or used in tandem on custom-designed questionnaires developed by our sensory experts.

Qualitative studies

Qualitative studies are designed to create consumer understanding through observation and analysis of gestures, behavior, emotions, feelings and relationship with the product or brand. Specialized analytical techniques are used to interpret the consumer’s words and gestures in order to obtain a qualitative understanding of his or her experience.

Qualitative research tools include:

• Focus groups
• Diads or triads
• Face-to-face interviews

They enable you to obtain unique insight into your products including concept tests, prototype evaluations, market positioning research and identification of new opportunities.

Quantitative studies

Quantitative research allows you to evaluate your market and define your offer based upon a solid understanding of consumer attitudes, usages and segmentation.

Quantitative research tools include:

• Product, pack and concept evaluations
• Discrimination tests
• Preference tests

They can be conducted in dedicated labs, at home or online.

Mérieux NutriSciences offers a range of innovative quantitative testing tools:

Sense’n Feel™

Sense’n Feel™ is a nonverbal tool that measures projected emotions using image boards. This tool provides a distinctive and novel approach to the field of sensory testing:

• Developing information on the emotional profile and personality traits of your products
• Building up knowledge about the product, thanks to a tool that involves the consumer through visual stimuli
• Clarifying the relationship that consumers have with the product, in emotional terms.
• Helping brands select the candidate most closely suited to their positioning
• Giving brands the keys they need to determine the emotional context of the various elements of communication, at local and global levels

Consumer Facets™

How can you improve your product mix and identify your target?
Our Consumer Facets™ tool enables you to identify the psychological levers that explain your consumers’ preferences. Thanks to these multiple psychological scales, such as measures of visual or tactile interest, the need for opinion or the social comparison measurement, we determine groups of personalities with varying behaviors.
Each group is linked to a product preference and enables us to better identify its target and adapt its marketing mix.

Preference Mapping

How can you explain consumer preferences? Our Preference Map defines the optimal product in sensory terms and identifies preference segments. Our trained experts objectively describe the nature and intensity of a range of products (sensory analysis). Consumers give their evaluation of the products (quantitative consumer tests).
Our statistical analysis systematically correlates the data obtained by these two types of studies.

Capeco™: Consumer Perceptions

How can you understand how a product’s ‘universe’ is perceived? Consumers test the products and then categorize them in groups spontaneously, according to similarities (categorization test). The same consumers then describe these groups of products.
Following analysis of similarities, data is converted into a perception map to identify a consumer vocabulary and determine consumer segments.

Sensory Trade-Off

How can you find out what consumers perceive as the most important attribute of your product mix? Consumers evaluate several possible product mix combinations (color, flavor, appearance, packaging, brand), in order to choose the best compromise according to their expectations.
Attributes are prioritized according to their perceived importance. We can then help you determine the “ideal” product mix according to the consumer, and establishes preference segmentation.