Taste Palette – metaphoric taste test

Developing the flavours of grocery and personal care products (e.g. toothpaste, OTCs) requires
close cooperation between the technologist who can create them, the researcher and the consumer,
who shall suggest how proposals tested can be optimised.

The key challenge in the entire research process is the fact that consumers have at their disposal
very limited vocabulary describing their sensory experience.

In order to optimise the actionability of taste research EEI has developed its proprietary ‘Taste
Palette’ methodology. The taste test conducted by means of the metaphoric ‘Taste Palette’ method
shows the level of acceptance for a newly developed flavour, and the direction of preferred changes.

For existing flavours the ‘Taste Palette’ shall identify competitive advantages and drawbacks of a
given product. It shall allow for optimising the explored flavour in order to achieve competitive
advantage on the product level. The key advantage of the ‘Taste Palette’ methodology is the fact that
it employs metaphoric symbols enabling the respondents to go beyond the verbal code. When
selecting a given icon, the study participants are able to precisely describe more taste dimensions
then they would be if they used verbal expressions only.

Apart from qualitative data the ‘Taste Palette’ allows for collecting overall acceptance level scores on
multilevel scales.