Exploring Sensory Science to Drive Better Decisions: Beyond Liking in Consumer Healthcare (OTC)

Standard bipolar Liking scales force consumers into making a binary choice resulting in a loss of some more nuanced understanding around consumer liking and disliking.  SAM-PPL Insights and Haleon wanted to gain further insights into whether the inclusion of separate liking intensity and disliking intensity scales leads to greater understanding of the consumer experience than a single standard bipolar liking scale.

Approach 

Consumer testing was conducted on OTC pain relief cream products and hot medicated drinks. Separate 9-point liking and disliking intensity scales were utilised with an additional bipolar overall liking scale included on the pain relief product study The separate intensity scale results were compared with the bipolar scale results. Additionally, sensory testing driver analysis was conducted on the hot medicated drink products to assess whether there was any difference in key drivers identified when using the separate intensity and bipolar scales.

Outcome

A liking intensity scale could replace the standard overall liking bipolar scale without loss of insight. Consumers use the two scales in a similar way which lead to similar conclusions. However, consumers respond to the separate liking and disliking intensity scales in different ways than they do to the single bipolar liking scale. The inclusion of both liking intensity and disliking intensity scales can identify a wider set of drivers and precise responses from consumers, leading to greater depth of understanding and insight.

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