Preference Mapping

Preference mapping is a set of statistical techniques which helps to understand the relationship
between the sensory properties of a product and the liking of the product by the consumers. It
provides the companies new insights which help in improving or optimizing existing products.

Why Preference mapping is needed?

It is not enough for marketing persons to know whether the consumers like or dislike their
product. They need to know the reasons behind such feelings. They need to know the strengths
and weaknesses of their products to optimize and improve on them.
Also consumers cant express properly why exactly they like the products in a precise and
reliable manner. They dont have the vocabulary nor the sensory capabilities to properly judge a
product.
These problems are tackled by preference mapping.

Preference Mapping are of two types:

1. Internal Preference:

These are based on the liking of the product. Hedonic data generated by the customers
thorough consumer survey helps in orientation of the maps. The sensory attributes are
added to the preference space at a later stage.

Advantages:
It helps in showing consumer segmentation.

Disadvantages:
Consumers may like products equally but products are different in terms of sensory.
Also it is not as much researched as say an external preference mapping

2. External Preference:

These are based on the similarity of the sensory properties. Sensory data generated by the
sensory experts are used to orient the maps. The preference data can be fitted into the
fixed spaces at a later stage.

Advantages:
It is very well researched. It shows the density maps of satisfied consumers known as
Danzart chart.

Disadvantages:
Products are represented based on sensory properties which not always encourage liking
of the product. This sometimes results in poor customer fit.
Methodology

Consumers are called for using the products and evaluating them. The data is collected on a 7-
point hedonic scale. Customers generally evaluate 6 or more products which can be a mixture of
competitor products and some potential prototypes of the company.

For description of the products and the features, trained and qualified sensory experts are used
who are capable of giving details about the nature and intensity of the sensations generated by a
product. They are asked to describe and not to evaluate the products which are done the
customers.

Finally, statistical analysis links the two groups of data and helps in the pleasure experienced by
consumers using the sensory characteristics described by the experts.
Data
Data for preference mapping are cocktail data which has been sourced from SensoMineR
package. After converting them to 0 to 10 scale where 10 refers to be most liked, the product
means are as below:

Model

The model has been built on mapping product with an addition of consumer section to that.
Prefernce for each and every consumer is being modeled to an ideal point where the liking is
maximum and with points that are being liked in declining way. Distance dependent function can
be described with the mathematical function of maxliking * e-distance*scale. Capture of ideal
point is done by three numbers: its liking & its coordinates. The scale function is common. Apart
from these, a lot of codes are there to administer all parameters.
Analysis results
Sensominers result

SensoMineRs carto() function is being used for plotting results for the sake of comparing. In this
plot, color indicates liking whereas the numbered dots are indicated to be products. As we can
see the products having highest means are residing in blue zone so the blue zone is most liked.
New method
In this case the blue dots are shown as samples of ideal points, the bigger black numbers are
being the locations of products and the smaller red numbers indicating consumers ideal points.
Here popular products e.g. 13 and 15 have been pulled to the center by consumers. So by this
analysis, it can be interpreted that the consumers preference has dominated over the information
acquired from the sensory space thus being different from SensoryMineR. Now the consumers
are being spitted.
Three groups of consumers
Cluster 1

This has been characterized by consumer liking towards products 8 to 11. If comparing with
original space, this cluster does not like products 13 and 15 that much and also does not dislike
product 4 and 12 so much.
Cluster 2

These are having the bulk of the consumers and more pronounced result has been seen.
Cluster 3

In this case the center is void as no presence of most liked products

Next Steps
To improve the approach rather than modeling only the maximum their range of liking can be
modelled. In this case scale parameter may depend on the subject. It will be a better way to
extract dimensions from the sensory space and to have an improved graphics.

Code