A hornet is a wasp, but all wasps aren’t hornets.
This was the topic of a family conversation as we sat outside drinking wine on a beautiful fall day while simultaneously being accosted by yellowjackets. It started when I complained about the ubiquity of wasps AND hornets in the fall.
Rather than falling into agreement, my brother pointed out the redundancy of my statement.
“Holly, you can just say ‘wasps.’ Hornets ARE wasps.”
Then we devolved into a moose is a deer, but all deer aren’t moose, and similar examples.
Why did we amuse ourselves so easily with these facts? I think it is because the mind loves things that feel illogical. They're little brain twisters. The trick is that we routinely confuse a necessary condition with a predictive condition.
The funny thing is that this same logic trap shows up constantly in product development.
Later, while discussing Overall Liking with a colleague, I found myself amused by a similar paradox. Successful products tend to be well liked, but Overall Liking alone does not predict product success.
This is a brain twister that gets people tied up all too frequently.
They either sacrifice the uniqueness of a new product innovation to ensure strong Overall Liking scores, only to lose the distinction that might have made the product successful. Or they decide to prioritize speed over quality because Overall Liking doesn’t predict success, while number of launches appears to correlate with it.
Hand to forehead.
I think this is why the Pumpkin Spice product line-up now feels like my personal Russian Roulette.
I like Pumpkin Spice. Sometimes.
As Gail Civille points out:
“There are probably 150 pumpkin-spice profiles. Many lower-cost versions heavily rely on cinnamic aldehyde, a basic sweet taste component, and a brown-sugar or molasses sweet aromatic note rather than a balanced spice composition.”
The pumpkin spice cake pop I recently bought at a coffee shop was disgusting (to me). The Pumpkin Danish Kringle my husband bought at Trader Joe’s was so delicious we bought four to put in the freezer. The mini doughnuts at the Harvest Festival in Delano were also superb. The creamer my husband brought home, having seen a run of pumpkin spice successes, was neither good nor bad. I won’t finish it, but I didn’t throw it away either.
They all wore the same “pumpkin spice” label, but they delivered very different sensory experiences.
What’s the point?
A product must be enjoyable. Flavor is a primary driver of enjoyment, though aroma, texture, contrast, and other sensory attributes cannot and should not be disentangled from the flavor experience.
To get a flavor experience “just right,” you can run a lot of expensive research. Or you can leverage people who have spent decades learning how consumers perceive products and how product characteristics drive those perceptions. What if we could evaluate the flavors of the most popular spice products and peer into the profiles that drive success? A well-trained and experienced descriptive panel can map those successes and dictate what is driving success. Experienced sensory professionals can often set you on a path toward a more focused, confirmatory product test.
Experience isn't something you can purchase. It must be learned and earned.
In the age of AI, many organizations assume algorithms can replace sensory expertise and those algorithms contain the mapping of the products and attributes that matter. So far, that assumption seems optimistic. Sensory systems are extraordinarily complex and context dependent. Experience still matters.
Which leads me to the following question:
If you’re developing a product that must be liked, does your team have experienced sensory professionals guiding the process?
If not, or if you could use additional support, consider reaching out to Sensory Spectrum. We can help optimize Overall Liking.
The rest of product success is still up to the marketplace.
[Written by a human]
