Children’s Testing

A client wanted to assess how their children’s biscuits compared with market leading varieties to ensure their product was still considered one of the best available. There was a range of products to be assessed and a number of competitor products for comparison.

The target audience was young children below the age of 10 which meant the process lent itself to a home use study. Each of the children was given the client’s product along with a series of competitor products for evaluation. The children were all regular consumers of the product category and the order of assessment of the products was rotated to avoid any potential bias of order effects.

The children were asked to rate the products with a simplified questionnaire due to the young age demographic. The products were assessed against a number of key criteria designed to explore consumer liking of appearance, aroma, flavour and texture qualities, along with an overall score for each product.

The client was able to see where their product was positioned in the marketplace and how it performed against each of their key competitors. Significant differences between the products were highlighted at 95% confidence to clearly identify where the products differed in terms of consumer acceptance.

Based on the feedback from the research, we were able to demonstrate to our client the exact strengths and weaknesses of each of the products in the eyes of the target consumer. The client was then able to reformulate any products that fell short of expectation, to maximise consumer acceptance.