Creating New Foods. The Product Developer's Guide - Product Strategy Development: Product Concepts and Product Design Specifications

Home

Contents

About the book

About the authors

Preface

development project

2. The organisation of

development project

3. Product strategy

development: idea

screening

4. Product strategy

development: product

concepts and design

specifications

5. Product design and

process development

commercialisation

7. Product launch and

evaluation

8. Summary: bringing

it together

8.10 Textbooks in

product development

Index of Examples &

Problems

Feedback (email link)

CHAPTER 4
Product Strategy Development:
Product concept building

4.3 PRODUCT CONCEPT BUILDING

To build up the product concept, the important product characteristics are identified by the consumers, then the descriptions and if possible the 'strengths' of the product characteristics are determined. The product characteristics and their strengths are combined in a product profile.

4.3.1 Product profile

First the important product characteristics (the consumer product benefits) are identified by the consumer. The sensory properties are usually important to the consumer and there is often an emphasis on the sensory characteristics in building up the product profile as they are directly related to design.

For Madeira cake (a sweet plain, rectangular cake, soft texture, cut into slices), the important characteristics were identified as colour, taste/flavour, moistness and crumbliness. But there are other benefits to the consumer in buying a Madeira cake: the size, the packaging, the storage life, the availability to produce it quickly for a visitor. Consumers may not consider the nutritional value of a Madeira cake, but this is an important characteristic for many other foods. A checklist of general product benefits is useful as a reference during the consumer focus group discussion.

4.3.2 The ideal product profile

The ideal product profile is developed by the consumers, based on the most important product characteristics. In ideal product profile tests, the consumers study the competitive products and/or the product prototypes, and for each product characteristic score the test products on a scale from low to high. Then they place their scores for their ideal product (I) on the same scales.

The ideal product profile gives a quantitative measure for each product characteristic which can be built up to the product design specifications. Part of the building of a product profile for orange juice is shown in Example 4.2.

Example 4.2
The building of a product profile for orange juice

The consumers in a consumer focus group were asked to:

visually examine and taste three competing brands of orange juice;

identify the product characteristics in their own words;

discuss these characteristics among themselves;

decide the most important characteristics;

score each of the three orange juices on the scales for the important characteristics;

(scales went from low (or weak) to high (or strong) on a 7 point scale).

mark the scores for their ideal orange juice on the scales of the important characteristics. The three brands of orange juice were Sweet Orange (SO), Perfect Fruit (PF) and Natural Juice (NJ).

The mean scores of the three orange juices and the ideal orange juice (I) for some product characteristics were:

Low

High

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Colour: pale yellow/bright orange

:

NJ

:

I

:

PF

:

SO

:

:

:

Colour: natural/very synthetic

:

I

:

NJ

:

PF

:

SO

:

:

:

Thickness: watery/syrupy

:

:

SO

:

NJ I

:

:

PF

:

:

Pulpiness: little/lots

:

:

PF SO

:

NJ I

:

:

:

:

Sweetness: not sweet/very sweet

:

:

NJ

:

I

:

:

PF

:

SO

:

Sourness: not sour/very sour

:

:

SO

:

I

:

NJ

:

PF

:

:

The Natural Juice was similar to the Ideal, slightly more synthetic colour, less sweet and more sour. Perfect Fruit and Sweet Orange were brighter orange, less pulpy and sweeter. But the Ideal was between Perfect Fruit and Sweet Orange for thickness and sourness – Sweet Orange too watery and Perfect Fruit too syrupy, Sweet Orange lacking sourness and Perfect Fruit too sour.

So one can see how this comparison has defined the product characteristics wanted by the consumer.

Think Break 4.3
Building a product profile: orange juice

To the product profile in Example 4.2, add two more sensory characteristics that you think are important for orange juice and describe their lows and highs.

What benefits can you identify under packaging, nutritional value, use and safety that the consumer might want in orange juice? What are the most important?

Write low and high descriptions of the scales for these important benefits, for example low/high vitamin C, dull/crazy.

Ask some friends to score three juices on the scales and place their ideal products.

PRODUCT CONCEPT EVALUATION

Back to the top

Creating New Foods. The Product Developer's Guide. Copyright © Chartered Inst. of Environmental Health.
Web Edition published by NZIFST (Inc.)