Optimization Of Attributes Selected In Product Development

There are many problems troubling development people in the process of product development. For example: What kind of product do consumers prefer? What's the difference between our and competitor's product? What's the driver of consumer's preference? What's the difference of consumer's preference? Is there anyopportunity in market? How to claim our new product to consumers...... It's verycomplex and important to select and give right intensity to the attributes selected when there are too many attributes.From recent 30s years, with the development of sensory evaluation method, research people from developed country began to use multivariate statistical method to link descriptive data and consumer test data to optimize the product's attributes. The most popular technique is Preference Mapping.Preference Mapping is a technique to link descriptive data and consumer test data. It has 2 types mapping: Internal Preference Mapping and External Preference Mapping. Internal Preference Mapping uses consumer test data to produce consumer preference mapping first, then descriptive data added. While External Preference Mapping uses descriptive data to produce sensory mapping first, then consumer test data added. Both of them have advantage and disadvantages. How to select the proper techniques is what the research people think of for now.This article will briefly introduce the method of sensory evaluation as well as content and process of Preference Mapping technique. It will also give detail description of the theory and data analysis method of the 2 types Preference Mapping together with the cases to analyze data using statistical software. There are many pages analyzing the difference between each method and introducing the improvement made to decrease the drawback of these techniques.