Review Article :
Psychophysics is the oldest branch of experimental psychology, devoted to understanding the relation between physical stimuli (e.g., ingredients, processes) and subjective response. When applied to developing food products for commercial use, psychophysics takes on a new role, as a center point in an evolving ecology of many unrelated but relevant disciplines and professions. We present a short history of the application of psychophysics to the world of food product design, and the ecosystems which grew around it, evolved, changed, and had to be reengineered to be relevant for the 21st century.
Introduction-Innovation Until recently, perhaps until the
beginning of the 21st century, the development and marketing of
foods and beverages may be considered to have been in a blissful world of
minimal competition. The adage that people always have to eat lulled many
managers in companies to feel that they need only follow current best practices
to ensure the success of their products, and coincidentally the safety of their
jobs. This complacency was endemic in the world of fast-moving consumer
goods, mostly in the domains of knowledge
workers, those involved in the acquisition of knowledge from consumers. The reality of the world of food
and drink was quite different, however, from the blissful ignorance that best
practices bestowed upon the willing followers. Methods such as Stage-Gate and
the procedures of market research from need assessment at the beginning to STM
(simulated test market) at the end often predicted success that simply did hold
up [1,2]. Off the record professionals in the food
industry talk about very high, double-digit
failures in the introduction of food products, although there are always
excuses about the specifics, such as the introductions are not new products,
but new flavors of the same product. A lot of these failures can be
attributing to faulty knowledge, the wrong knowledge, and the siloed nature of
the knowledge-worker in the food or beverage company. The adage applies here,
success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. The reasons for any product
failure can be traced to single causes, but more often to a combination of
causes, most of which are beyond the ability of the developer to correct. There
are issues regarding fast moving markets, incomplete knowledge, faulty advertising,
faulty
pricing, faulty promotion. There is rarely, if ever, an
acknowledgment of the collapse of the infrastructure leading to success, such
collapse resulting from the abandonment of common-sense homework needed to make
the product a success [3,4]. The picture of the food and beverage industry just
painted led to a standardization of approaches, and a slow-moving industry,
where risk aversion ruled the day, and where testing evolving to a world of,
rigorous, expensive, and slow-moving best practices. The funds for experts on
consumer and sensory work were allocated, the professionals were in place,
often for many years at the same company, the supplier or vendor was selected,
and the processes of development/testing/introduction proceeded at a relaxed,
leisurely pace. The cadences of work reflected professionalism of process,
rather than business and market sensitivity. A great deal of the slow and
majestic pace of food companies came from the fact that the feedback loops were
slow, there were relatively few small companies competing with the large
companies, and the quality of store brands, private labels, were not high. A
great of effort was expended by companies to build brands, and to make sure
that the quality of the foods being sold in the store was maintained. And,
perhaps the most important thing of all was the fact that there was relatively
little imagination, so-called thinking out of the box. Technological advances
were at the level of ingredient substitutions, either to deliver sweetness,
saltiness, more authentic
flavors, with fewer side problems, such as
calories, health issues (e.g. blood pressure) or safety. The absence of
imagination was not so much manifested in the lack of innovation, for there was
always a dazzling array of flavors, but rather the lack of small companies
ready to try something new, something risky. What Consumers
Can Tell You, and What They Cannot The traditional methods, dating
back decades, has been to identify a consumer need, create some products, test
these products, and then rolls out the testing. The approach has tended to be haphazard,
done as a collection of siloed efforts, usually over a long time period, with
careful attention to the precision of measurement, to the proper use of
statistics, and generally to a defensive position in the research in order to
avoid exposing ones work to criticism. It has long been thought that an
insightful interviewer can pull out unknown needs from a consumer, with the
interview conducted either with one person (in-depth interview) or with a group
of consumers who chat with each other and with a skilled moderator (focus
group.) This is not the venue to discuss the degree to which this research,
qualitative research, accelerates the development process. The methods are
popular, appear to work, and are the staple of the very early stage of development,
when one wants to learn about the product and the category. When the developer
creates one or more prototypes,
the early stage interview, this qualitative step in development provides
valuable feedback about the way the consumer responds to one or a few instances
of a product [5]. Beyond the qualitative research
there was a world of testing. Often the testing would be done in the
development facility by in-house researchers, so-called the sensory evaluation
group, who often promoted their use by appeal to being local, and the lowest
budget provider of knowledge whether it was the in-house group or the external research
supplier, the so-called vendor, the pattern was fairly similar. The product
developer would submit one or two products, prototypes, variations of the new
products that were thought to be ready for testing. The research vendor or the
sensory group would then assemble a panel of 25-100 respondents, test the
products, either one at a time (sequential monadic) or head to head (paired
comparison). The data would tell the developer just what seemed to be ok with
the product, and what seemed to be wrong. These product tests were
reasonably fast, provided little in the way of actionable of immediate use to
the developer. The studies revealed egregious problems with the prototypes, but
often the direction for further development could not be obtained beyond the
simplest, most obvious flaws in the product, flaws needing correction. The
problem was that the developer submitted only one product, requiring the
respondent to do all the work. Methods such as the JAR, just about right scale,
and the ideal product, developed by author Moskowitz in 1968 [6], could not
show the formulation level, unless the developer was able to create the
products following a systematic plan, an experimental design. Nonetheless, often just having
the information about the problem of the product (e.g., too sweet not natural
tasting) often was good direction, and satisfied the product developer,
although just knowing the problem did not reveal the solution. That direct
solution was often left to the developer, with the off-hand statement the
developer knows how to use these results. The off-hand statement may have been
true but seems never to have been demonstrated in a repeatable fashion. Enter the
World of Psychophysics and the Emerging Ecosystem Around it The opportunity to create an
ecosystem of knowledge for product design and development comes, surprisingly,
not from the most modern of techniques but rather from the oldest field of
experimental psychology, psychophysics. Psychology today is a broad field,
ranging from dealing with personality and its problems (clinical psychology,
personality psychology), all the way to studies of the brain, and the function
of various parts of the brain in behavior (neuropsychology). Psychophysics,
a sub-specialty in the broad word of experimental psychology, comprises the
systematized study of the relation between physical stimuli and subjective
responses. Psychophysics got its start almost two centuries ago, in the
psychological laboratories of some famous German scientists, such as Herman
Helmholtz. The notion was a philosophical issue, namely relate what we think we
experience to the physical stimulus driving the experience. In the history of experimental psychology,
the early studies in psychophysics were crude, abstract, and from our point of
view today (2019) somewhat relevant, but just how and why? The researcher would
present a stimulus and instruct the respondent to react as quickly as the
stimulus was sensed (or its quality recognized). This was called reaction time.
Or the researcher might diminish the physical intensity of the stimulus, either
in a straightforward manner or in in irregular manner to hide the pattern, and
wait until the respondent answers I detect or I recognize, respectively. This
approach generates the threshold, the lowest level of a stimulus that the
respondent could sense. These studies were a start but gave only a slight hint
of what was to come, and how these early stages heralded a new opportunity for
business, and business eco-systems to develop. The world of modern
psychophysics, the psychophysics of TODAY, and topic to engage us in the rest
of the paper, looks for relations between physical stimuli and subjective
responses. These responses encompass the range of what people can judge,
subjective responses being ratings of the sensory intensity such as sweetness,
or ratings of hedonics, the liking of the sweetness, or in the more general
case, liking overall. In some cases, the rating scale has no relation at all to
a sensory or hedonic response, but rather may reflect a more complex cognitive
aspect, such as caloric. The goal of modern psychophysics is to discover lawful
relations, equations, not just correlations. For example, it is one thing to
show that the rating of sweetness correlates with the rating of sugar in
solution. That is straightforward, easy to demonstrate, but not of particular
use. What is far more important is the mathematical nature of the relation, the
regression model. When the researcher shows an equation, and even plots it out,
that demonstration heralds a new opportunity for developing ecology
of disciplines in the service of product design and development. During the formative years of the
new psychophysics, from World War II and onward, the luminary of the field was
the late Professor Stevens SS. Stevens, born in Utah, studied at Stanford
University found himself attracted to the notion of a science of measurement.
He enrolled in the 1930s at Harvard, studying with the eminence gris of
psychology, historian Edwin Garrigues Boring. It was Borings early familiarity
and interest in sensation and perception that would stimulate Stevens (known to
his friends as Smitty), inspiring him in his lifes work. That work was to
discover and then promote the use of these lawful relations between stimulus
intensity and sensory or hedonic response Stevens methods, painstaking
refined, validated, replicated, cross-validated almost to the degree of
obsession, allowed respondents (observers following the old German tradition)
to rate the intensity of a set of different stimuli of the same type, such as
sucrose solutions of different molarity, sounds of different sound pressure
levels, lights of different luminance. The exercise, usually done with about 10
observers, all that were needed, would have each observer rate all the stimuli
in an irregular order, with the order changed for each person. The result when
plotted was a regular graph, a curve. The curve straightened out when plotted
in log-log coordinates. Stevens concluded that the underlying relation between
stimulus level and response, perception, is a power function [7]. When the
rating scale likes the underlying relation in an inverted U-shaped curve. The
relation is more like an inverted bowl when there are two variables
interacting, and a hyper-bowl, hard to envision with three or more variables
interacting to drive liking [8]. Psychophysics
as the Center of a Product Design Knowledge Ecosystem The only way that ecosystems can
form naturally is for those in the system to recognize that they get more by
cooperating than by isolating. The cooperation may not be 100% but may be what
is called co-opetition, cooperating while at the same time competing. Psychophysics
came into the field of product design and development along two paths, the
first a painful one with sensory analysis, the second a more welcoming one with
market research. The entry with sensory analysis
was difficult, and did not lead anywhere, perhaps because the sensory analysis
world of the 1950s-1970s was insular, fighting for its own recognition as a
legitimate entity, and therefore was unwilling to be part, or even the center
of an ecological
system of different disciplines. The sensory
professional was fighting for the field to be recognized as a necessary
discipline in corporations and undertook very lock-steps procedures to create
descriptive panels, i.e., experts. The struggle to achieve professional
recognition in the company was waged by the sensory professional adopting a very
rigorous testing system, complete within itself, and not receptive to
interacting with those outside its own specialty. Psychophysics would find a more
receptive audience among market researchers, not fighting so much for
recognition as a profession as fighting to be recognized for their contribution
to building a business. Marketing researchers welcomed psychophysics, although
most researchers did not understand the science behind. It was important to the
market researchers to bring into tools from the outside which could help the
business grow. Furthermore, market researchers in the 1970s were socialized to
accept the ideas of vendors, outside experts, in contrast to the rather
isolationist viewpoint of the corresponding sensory specialist, even in the same
company. Developing the
Ecosystem- How to Make the Product Psychophysics began to create an ecosystem of
related groups in the 1970s, with early work done at Pepsi Cola, and work done
with Fermco Biochemics, Inc., Pepsi Cola needs no introduction. Fermco
Biochemics, headquarters in the Chicago area, held the patent for aspartyl
phenylalanine methyl ester, Aspartame®. The earliest acceptance of
psychophysics as a center in product design and development came from R&D,
working in tandem with marketing research, and supported by marketing. The
beginnings both occurred around 1974. The acceptance of the approach was due to
a chain of events, beginning with meetings with Pepsi Cola R&D at the ASTM
Committee E-18, the sensory evaluation of foods and materials. The key people
to recognize are chemistry Merrick Tibbets, and then in Pepsi Cola Robert
Abernathy, Vice Chairman, and Archie Porter, Head of R&D. Lesser known, but
also emerging from the ASTM group was the introduction by Kathleen Wolfe and
Charles Beck to Fermco Biochemics, Inc., which was just then pioneering the
production and testing of Aspartame®. What is noteworthy about the
early days was that these companies did not focus on formulaic descriptive
analysis, and extensive reports by sensory specialists. Rather, they were
focused on selling a product, or incorporating an ingredient. The focus was
primarily business, and not professional. Such was the case with another early
user, Victor V. Studer of Thomas J. Lipton Co., a division of the Unilever Corporation.
There were lessons to be learned here about ecosystems, the most important
being that an ecosystem had to develop and be ready to try new things. Before
the 1980s, ecosystems already were in existence dealing with product evaluation
and product testing. Both groups, sensory
analysis and marketing researchers, had formed
their own ecosystems to do the job. These ecosystems did not, allow for new
ways. The efforts were focused on wanting management to accept their results.
The efforts were on best practices and standardization, not on demonstrable
business success. The various organizations involved in the ecosystems, field
services, contract statisticians, advertising agencies, independent
consultants, and so forth, simply focused on doing the job. In a sense they
were impermeable, static, based upon personal relationships, perhaps because
there were no technologies available to them which would create breakthrough
performance. Ecosystems in product development
tend to grow larger with success, with breakthrough performance, and with the
recognition that the world has changed. In the early 1980s to the mid 1990s, an
increasing number of companies began to subscribe to the possibility that this
arcane psychological discipline, psychophysics, studying as it was the
functional relation between stimulus and perception, could drive product
improvement. It was not an acceptance based on acquiring the necessary
scientific background. That knowledge was left to the technical practitioners.
Rather, the product design and development ecosystem encouraged the use of the
tool, as appeared to be satisfied as long as the tool delivered success and was
presented in a manner which was clear, not obtuse. The key groups were market
research, marketing, and product development. How the Ecosystem
of How Declined The use of experimental design in
the 1980s and 1990s produced noteworthy products, ranging from beverages (e.g.,
Tropicana Grovestand® Orange Juice with pulp), Vlasic Zesty®
Pickles, Prego Chunky Pasta Sauce, and so forth. The ecosystems around
psychophysics-led product develop became larger, as it was embraced by product
developers in several companies, by marketers, by top management, and by the
trade [9]. During the stressful years of the
mid 2000s and beyond, the ecosystem dried up, as new product developers came
in, using a variety of other tools. There was a reluctance to make the
necessary prototypes, to spend the time and the money for the necessary
experiments, and a belief that the experimentation could be replaced by
analysis, by connecting the dots, or in a sense by avoiding the work
altogether, in favor of looking at the array of products out there in the
market and deducing (somehow) what was needed in terms of product design and
product formulation. There were many failures, but each explained away as an
aberration. The attractiveness of analyzing our way to the answer was
remarkable, almost seductive. The best analogy to this evolution was the
reliance on Big Data and the belief that it was all in the data. It was
analysis, not experimentation, which took over. The power of the ecosystem waned,
primarily because the system was cooperative, and not driven from the top in a
command and control. Despite the desire of many in companies to have
development done from the bottom up, the experience with the ecosystem,
membership in which was voluntary, suggested that the ecosystem did not really
exist except as a momentary constellation of disparate groups working together.
The era of experimental design has never really returned. The ecosystem which
had been so productive no longer had the attention and approbation of
executives who would push systematic development. Corporate entropy took over,
in the absence of strong leadership, and the increasing power of the purchasing
department. This pattern occurred at Campbell Soup, Tropicana, Pepsi Cola,
General Food/Maxwell House, and other companies which had funded the
large-scale studies, had created the necessary ecosystem of marketer, product
developer, statistical and research consultant, field service, and top
management. That informal constellation of talent simply dissipated, and never
reconstituted. The ecosystem which had emerged
from the systematized development of products appeared to have dissipated, and
in fact it did for 15 years, although it would be resuscitated about 2017. The
lesson learned from that hiatus was that the ecosystem was fragile. It also
appeared that when the ecosystem emerged from the response to ad hoc
situations, e.g., solving a specific development issue, the emergent ecosystem
itself was extremely fragile. There was no business formalization of the
ecosystem, which became ad-hoc, just like the business problem that the
ecosystem addressed. In contrast, more stable ecosystems emerged when the
activity had to be done, not as much to solve a problem, as for the daily
running of the business, when the activities of the ecosystem
resulted in a tick mark, that a required task had been done. Then, and only
then, was there enough ongoing flow of money for doing a task to ensure the
life of the delicate ecosystem. Solving business problems was not sufficient,
being a situation of opportunities rather than standardized tasks to be done. The story of that part of the
eco-system has not been completed. One of the observations about the fragility
of the ecosystem was that it required too much ad hoc thinking, too much
creativity, and too much effort on the part of the employees in the company.
Surprisingly, the employees of the technology-poor companies of the 1970s and
1980s were more positive towards systematics and psychophysics than were
professional their counterparts 30-40 years later, todays generation a
generation which has grown up with computers. The notion of doing systematic
experimental design gave way to the (unfounded) belief that everything was in
data that could be purchased. One did not have to do the work of creating
prototypes, actual effort. One could somehow analyze ones way through the data.
The actual analysis never eventuated, but the ability to divert real effort
with product creation and replace it with heavy duty, albeit unfocused and unproductive
analytics, became so powerful that the efforts of experimental design were
eventually deemed simply too effortful. The Situation
Today (First Decades of the 21st Century) Although market researchers,
innovation specialists, and even the trade, as well as those writing
newsletters feel that today there is a plethora of innovation in foods all
around the world, the reality is a bit different. A Harvard study suggested
that about 90% of new food products are failing [10]. Whether the rate is 90%
or 50% or 30% is irrelevant. What would happen if these statistics were to
apply to computers, to washing machines, to medical devices? The number of failures is higher
than it should be. It may well be that those involved in design and
development, as well as marketing, continue to use systems which are
fundamentally inadequate. If the palates of the consumer keep changing, why are
the big, establish companies failing to pick up these changes in tastes and
values, and launch the appropriate
products. A great deal of todays innovation
in the food and beverage world occurs in small companies, enthusiastic
start-ups, which are advocates of a certain lifestyle and values such as
organic, vegan and so forth. These enthusiasts often make products for
themselves because there is nothing to meet their needs and then sell them to
other enthusiasts. These products with their associated values percolate
through the layers of consumer acceptance until they become popular.
Occasionally, the company is purchased as a strategic move by a bigger company,
the latter with its resources not able to do what the smaller company has done,
the latter on a shoestring. Clearly the present systems and
methods for product development and innovation systems are severely flawed,
hamstrung by processes which do not work. The conclusion must be that were the
large food and beverage companies to be doing the right studies, the right
experiments, and properly guiding product developments, there would be far
fewer failures. The products would be already out there so there would be no
need for innovative startups. The
Slow Rebirth of the Ecosystem for How One of the earliest harbingers of
a newly evolving ecology comes from Design Thinking. Design Thinking, a
human-centered approach, has been made hugely popular by Tim Brown from IDEO.
Design Thinking has been adopted in one or another fashion by many
organizations. The design thinking process solves the challenges through
inspiration, implementation and ideation by identifying consumer needs through
a serious of immersions, workshops, brainstorming, prototyping,
and testing these prototypes. In Browns words Design thinking can feel chaotic,
the design process is best described metaphorically as a system of spaces
rather than a pre-defined series of orderly steps [11]. Psychophysical thinking
contributes the systematized testing of ideas & prototypes through
formatted design of experiments to cut through this design-chaos. The issue
with psychophysics in the design world is simply the lack of publicity, coupled
with the reluctance to do the mundane but necessary work of creating the
prototypes, not so much as part of ones education as a process, but rather as
the day-to-day approach. In other words, design thinking and psychophysics must
evolve to a tick-mark in the quotidian, rather than an exciting break from a
more normal, less disciplined routine. Psychophysics has also begun to
enjoy a renaissance, although the progress is slower because psychophysics is
not so much a way of thinking in the spirit of the above-mentioned Design
Thinking, but an actual process of Doing. As of this writing, the
psychophysical approach has started a new phase in the business ecosystem, with
new players, experienced individuals outside the company, but with extensive
corporate experience. The change in strategy began with the recognition in 2014
that the world had forever changed, that a new generation had emerged which did
not understand the value of systematic exploration, and in fact were not even
senior enough in their jobs to understand the nature of the product with which
they were working. The tenure of jobs was shorter, companies were no longer
employing senior people in the name of cost cutting profitability, and most
employees were becoming exceptionally risk averse. All of these destroyed the
eco-system, which had to be rebuilt in a new fashion. There was a secondary recognition
as well, the prevalence of hope in the concept of Big Data. As noted above, a
dual or shadow of the culture of experimentation was the culture of connecting
the dots, of story-telling, of analysis in place of experimentation. The
advances of computation, the widespread availability of data, the almost
frenetic investments in analytics for Big Data ended up sidelining the value of
experimentation. The feeling was that it was all in there. The solution simply
had to emerge, sooner or later, from powerful statistical analyses and one
could then skip experimentation which as the non-glittering t homework, of the
dull painful sort encountered in systematic prototype creation. The
reconstruction of the product-development ecosystem began with the realization
that the world of product design and development had changed. Many of the older
professionals, those with power to make decisions, had retired, left the
company, and in so doing simply disappeared with the experience of the
technology gone with them. It was at that moment that the realization emerged
that the next stage in the ecosystem had to be re-established on technology,
widely used, and not in the hands of a few experts, who could once again
disappear for any one of a thousand reasons. The reemergence of the
product-develop ecosystem was predicted on technology, a suite of computer
programs, easily and widely available, with extremely low cost. The ecosystem
of 30 and 40 years before had grown within the confines of personal relations
among the individuals, the awarding of projects, and the lack of interference
of the purchasing department. The 1990s and beyond would see purchasing
departments, not professionals, often dictating the terms within which a vendor
could work with a client. As an unforeseen consequence, eventually the only
projects that would be approved were those that were standardized. These
experiences would dictate the nature of the new ecosystem, one designed to
appeal to smaller companies, where the employees were always aware of the tenuousness
of their jobs, and where there were few or no professional fiefdoms to protect. The new reality was to create a
simple suite of programs, and let anyone use it, at very low cost. The effort
would still have to be made to create systematically varied prototypes
according to an experimental design, a heritage from the psychophysics of 30
and 40 years before. What changed, however, was the elimination of people,
thinking, and active problem-solving. It was not that these were unimportant,
but rather the talent to do the thinking had been diluted so that the notion of
experimental design was truly alien, not matter what the professionals averred.
And, at the same time, it was important to circumvent the rigid procurement
rules which had been established in the corporation to standardize efforts and
save money, but which created a stranglehold on innovative ideas, virtually
keeping them out of the corporation because they had no track record with the
corporation, and worse, no billing number. The revised approach was to
create a basic set of eight products, no more, no fewer. Each variable could
have only two options, A or B, on or off, and so forth. There could be 3-7
independent variables, with the same set of 8 combinations appropriate for each
condition. The notion was to make the approach automatically analyzed, and
automatically reported in minutes, at a very low cost. The eco-system would
evolve from problem solvers at the basic technical level to problem solvers
using a set of pre-fixed, canned programs. Side Journey-Sensory
Segmentation The early studies in
psychophysics of taste and smell focused on the relation between sensory
intensity (e.g., sweetness) and the actual ingredient level. Occasionally, an
enterprising researcher would change the rating scale so that the rating was
degree of liking, not degree of sweetness. The results were startling. As the
amount of sugar in the solution increased, i.e. perceived sweetness increased,
liking went up, peaked and went down, approximating an inverted U-shaped curve.
Of greater importance, however, was the discovery that people differed, that
there was no single curve, but rather a family of curves. Some curves continued
to go straight up, perhaps peaking at a high level of sweetness, whereas other curves
peaked in the middle, and still others peaked at a low level of sweetness and
then dropped down with further increases in sweetness. In other words, the
simple world of perception of amount fragmented when the perception was not of
amount but rather of liking of amount. The academic use of this
information is great, the business use is greater, especially when the business
ecology marries together marketers who want to sell more, product developers
who can formulate to fit these newly discovered taste preference groups
(so-called sensory segments), and finally technical experts who could analyze
the data, to make it reveal the nature of these sensory segments, and how to
formulate optimally for each. The acceptance of the notion of sensory
segmentation was not immediate. It was offered to one very large global food
company, but there were no contacts, and thus no possibility of an ecosystem to
support it. It was then offered to Vlasic Foods, Inc., then a division of
Campbell Soup Company, where the response was positive. The early adopters, Dr. Pal
Palnitkar, Mr. Cary Monaghan, Mr. William Shaw, and Mr. James Dorsch were all
positive to it, as was Mr. John Scales, the president of Vlasic Foods, Inc.,
The happy result was that the early studies with pickles changed the entire
thinking of how pickles should be formulated, generated the most successful
pickle in history until then (Zesty), revealed the power of psychophysical
thinking to drive segmentation, and in its wake generated 125 million dollars in
the first few years. The evolution of this new eco-system around sensory
preference segmentation continued, again at a slow pace. Remarkably, wherever
the segmentation approach was applied, tied into experimental design and
psychophysical thinking, the results were dramatic wins in business, especially
in term of the sales of the product, and the return on investment. The second
effort, this time with Campbell Soup company itself, driven by marketing
research (Monica Wood), and marketing (Kathleen MacDonald), revolutionized the
business of pasta sauces, and came up with an array of pasta sauces (especially
Prego Chunky), which would make money for decades, and continues to do so. The
learning regarding business ecosystems is that the ecosystem must involve
decision makers who focus on the business, and not on the demonstration of
their own value to the corporation. Had there been blocks in the effort, as
there were in so many other places, neither Zesty nor Prego Chunky would ever
had emerged. Side Journey-Merging
Economics with Food Design and Development At the time of this writing, the
introduction of psychology
into economics is all the rage. The contributions of psychology to economics
suggest different ways of making decisions, the effect of mind-sets and the
often-deceptive situations which drive the decision to be incorrect. In the
world of psychophysics and product design, the introduction of economic
concepts has done the opposite, also successfully. The marriage of
psychophysics and economics has created a world wherein one can optimize
product for acceptance and image (fit to a concept), s subject to economic
variables such as cost of goods, as well as show the joint of effect of product
hedonics and price to driving stated interest in purchase. The impact of
economics is its application to the psychology of price, and thus the ability
to drive development. When the respondent does not want to pay a high price,
the cost of goods is constrained, and the product formulation must be changed. Prospects As we hurtle toward the third
decade of the 21st century, the issue is whether the fragile eco-system of
product design through psychophysics can evolve to a new generation. The
lessons learned from the journey of psychophysics through the world of product
design are: ·
The ecosystem organically arises
to fit a new opportunity ·
The ecosystem may emerge from
supply (selling a project) or from demand (improving a product) ·
It is better to solidify the
eco-system as a set of procedures at a lower level in the corporation, rather
than have the procedure gain a great deal of visibility. In other words, the
ecosystem works together when it addresses a standardized task, rather than a
one-off task. In other words, the ecosystem is safer when it is a tick mark in
a system, rather than an insight which creates millions, or even billions of
dollars of revenue. ·
The ecosystem is fragile,
especially when built on thinking, rather than on rote process. A thought-driven
ecosystem can be readily blocked from within a corporation. In fact, as Maurice
Maeterlinck (poet, dramatist, Nobel Laureate) famously opined: Each progressive
spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past. Acknowledgment Attila Gere thanks the support of
the Premium Postdoctoral Researcher Program of Hungarian Academy of Sciences. References 1.
Cooper
RG. Stage-gate systems: A new tool for managing new products (1990) Business
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mjihrm@gmail.com Citation: Moskowitz H, Roberts D, Nagarajan D and Gere A. Optimizing Food and Beverage Product
Development: From the Past to the 21st Century and Beyond (2019) Edelweiss Appli Sci Tech 3: 30-35. Ecosystem, Psychophysics, Experimental psychology and Psychology.Optimizing Food and Beverage Product Development: From the Past to the 21st Century and Beyond
Howard Moskowitz,Derek Roberts, Divya
Nagarajan and Attila Gere
Abstract
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