Lecture Three: Perception Tests

In this weeks lesson we, as the students, were going to be running the show. At the end of last week Ruth told us that in groups of our own choice we had to go away and prepare a test for the lesson today.

The idea was that if we carried out our experiments we would:

- Inform the rest of the class about our experiment.
- Discuss and evaluate our experiment and findings.
- Understand how our perceptions are different.
- Get a better understanding of what experiment we should carry out for our assignment.
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Experiment One: The Coke Taste Test

Experiment Holders: Tim and Kara

Method
The test was a pure and simple taste test which involved three different drinks from the Coca-Cola brand. These were regular Coke, Coke Zero and Diet Coke. The idea is that there was a set of 3 cups on the table, each containing one of each of these drinks; volunteers then taste each one and rate it from 1 to 3 (3 being bad and 1 good) on its taste. Then if they wanted they could guess which one was Coke, Coke Zero and Diet Coke.

What Tim and Kara were hoping to find is that a persons perception of a Brand will affect the taste of the drink. You may have heard of the Coke vs. Pepsi blind taste test were asked to try a sample of Coke and a sample of Pepsi, not knowing which one is which. They found that people preferred the taste of Pepsi but would buy coke because of the perception of the brand.

Results
What they found is Nadia, without knowing which drink is which, rated regular Coke as the best, Coke-Zero as 2 and Diet Coke as the worst. These findings didn't come a shock to me and Jeffrey because we also did not know what drink was which but purely from Nadia's reaction we could tell what drink was which, this made it very interesting because Nadia went against what most people said, which was that Diet Coke tastes the best.

Evaluation
From the discussion in the class of the experiment we found that the results may have been better if there had been something to bland the pallet between each taste. This way any of the previous tastes would not affect the results. Also we found that it may have been better if it had been carried out more formally with a range of people etc.


Experiment Two: Chocolate Taste Test

Experiment Holders: Nicola, Amy, Anne-Marie, Kirsty and Alex

Method
The method is a selection of different chocolate bars, all the same type of chocolate (I.E. Milk) but different brands etc. They had 5 in total:

- Waitrose Belgium Chocolate
- Tesco's Value Milk Chocolate
- Asda's Mid-Range Milk Chocolate
- Tesco's Mid-Range Milk Chocolate
- Tesco's High-End Milk Chocolate

Again they wanted to see how the brand of a particular chocolate affects the taste and were expecting, as most of us would, that the most preferred would be the Waitrose Belgium Chocolate. The idea is that volunteers come up try each chocolate and then choose their favourite.

Results
What they found was that overall the class preferred the Tesco Value Milk Chocolate which came as a surprise to all of us. They also found that the Tesco High-End Milk Chocolate, which was expected to be the 2nd best, was actually the worst overall because it was not as smooth as it could be.

Evaluation
In the class we again mentioned that it may have been a good idea to have something to clean the pallet so that the taste buds were not affected by the previous taste. It was also suggested that it might be a good idea to have no more that 3 different types of chocolate so that it is easier for most people. Finally as with experiment one we suggested that it would be good with a range of ages etc because of different taste sensations.