I’ve got bourbon preferences. While living in Lexington, Kentucky, for 5 years earning my M.S. and Ph.D., I managed to try at least 20 different brands of bourbon. Through trial and error, I learned what I preferred. Woodford Reserve and Four Roses always had a place on my shelf. When sipping these bourbons and describing what I liked about them, I would articulate that they were smooth, oaky, and sweet. I’m embarrassed in retrospect to admit to having strong preferences without a clear understanding of what landed me there. My descriptions certainly didn’t explain my choices.
As a graduate student, that wasn’t a problem. I knew what I liked. The problem then, and now, belongs to the companies competing for consumers like me. How can they learn why I prefer certain brands when my description fits almost all bourbon brands? What about the sensory experience am I actually responding to? How can they convert me to a loyal consumer of a bourbon they produce?
The solution for companies is to get clear on the problem. Broad sensory descriptions can differentiate products, but winning consumers like me requires understanding how those products are different. That is fundamentally a measurement problem. This is where descriptive sensory research thrives. At its core, it's about objectively uncovering, measuring, and characterizing the sensory experience. At its best, it's about measuring the nuance consumers use to distinguish their preferences, yet are largely unable to reliably articulate. Nuance matters. A lot. It’s not just about creating a richer description, it's about revealing the specific characteristics behind preferences.
Gail Civille shared an analogy with me (and I’m a sucker for analogies). One way to think about describing a flavor is by imagining it as an apartment building. People might tell me to check out the “sweet” building. But when I get there, I still need to find the right floor. "Sweet aromatic" could be that floor. Inside the individual apartments on that floor are the meaningful distinctions: vanilla, caramelized notes, brown sugar, and molasses. And don't forget, there are rooms within each apartment. Measurement that only describes the building can identify broad differences between products. But if you can at least reach the apartment level, you can begin to describe the sensory distinctions that create preference, loyalty, and ultimately competitive advantage.
The question is: Can your measurement system get beyond the building? Come to Sensory Spectrum’s Bourbon tasting at the SSP conference and join me. Let’s get acquainted with the flavor nuances of Bourbon together.
