Puratos Sensobus crosses the ocean
Ingredients company Puratos has introduced its Sensobus concept in the United States to help drive its worldwide consumer understanding approach forward.
This Puratos mobile laboratory has been crossing the European continent in order to chart consumer preferences for many years. Now, the Sensobus is also hitting American soil. The fully equipped mobile sensory analysis lab can be driven anywhere within the United States and Canada to conduct tailor-made sensory analysis projects for Puratos’ customers.
The spacious mobile sensory laboratory creates a comfortable environment for consumers to share their opinions about their food preferences. Around 300 consumers can take part in food research per day. On entering the Sensobus, consumers will be seated at one of 8 individual sensory tasting booths and be presented with a selection of bakery, patisserie or chocolate prototypes.
They will then be asked questions such as “Does the product look appetizing?”, “Which bread do you prefer?”, or “How much would you pay for this chocolate cake?”. The answers are used to calculate a data mapping to indicate consumer preference. In combination with a mapping of the product characteristics Puratos can precisely determine and explain which products best match consumer expectations to ensure that customer’s new product launches are a hit.
The Sensobus can be set up anywhere: supermarkets, shopping centres, at events, etc. In fact at any location where there are consumers who are often very happy to participate in a tasting session.
It is Puratos’ mission to gain the opinions of over 25,000 US and Canadian consumers in the first year of operation of this new Sensobus.
The first Sensobus, in the form of an old-style London bus, hit the European roads just over 7 years ago. Last year Puratos replaced it by a brand new truck that travels through Europe to learn more about consumer preferences.
The Sensobus is managed by a team of specialized Sensory Analysts backed up with a fully equipped Research and Development group to help turn the analysis results into successful products on the shelves.