PRODUCT TESTING IN THE SPHERE OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT 31 stant vigilance is required to ensure that every product on the market is maintained up-to-date both in quality and appeal. Competition does not remain idle and markets change under various influences, sometimes with great rapidity. There is therefore a recurring need for consumer research while a product is still on the market. (Received: 24th August 1966) REFERENCES (1) Ludford, Mrs. S. M. J. Soc. Cosmetic Chemists 18 (1967). (2) Ovens, L. H. in Middleton, A. W. (ed.) Cosmetic Science 103 (1959) Butterworths, London. (3) Pugh, C. Private communication. Introduction by the lecturer Mrs. Ludford and I are saying more or less the same things. There is room for differences of opinion in product testing, but both papers show that existing tech- niques are far from perfect, and that a lot still remains to be done to improve matters. I would like, however, to emphasise a number of points. First of all, product develop- ment does not end when the product is on the market. It begins as an idea in someone's head and ends only when the product which eventually evolved ceases to be on the market. In dealing with product testing there are two main aspects: the development of completely new products which cannot strictly be compared with anything existing at the moment, and the modification, improvement, or development of existing products. It is very important to have in mind from the beginning the test objectives and the need for the most precise definition of them. Stemming from this, the sample of people used for a test depends on the objectives. The interpretation of the results must also take account of the sample used as well as the objectives, otherwise one can be misled. What about the future? There are a number of areas in which development work is going along. Once again, quoting Mrs. Ludford {1), social class is not necessarily a useful variable it would possibly be more useful if we could categorise people by their attitudes to life, or to new products by psychological traits, by dividing people, for example, into extroverts or introverts as yet we have no simple means of cate- gorising people in this way. Existing methods are not entirely satisfactory and tend to involve a full scale survey in themselves. What we want is some means of achieving this end by asking only two or three questions. Another problem is the lack of adequate vocabulary. In all areas of sensory percep- tion people find it difficult to express themselves in precise terms. In product testing we are not very often dealing only with highly intelligent, well educated people we are dealing with a cross section of the whole population. Dr. Belson of the L.S.E., who used to be with the BBC Audience Research Department, undertook research some years ago on the level of understanding of BBC talks. His findings revealed that a high proportion of the population do not know the meaning of many seemingly simple words. We must therefore be extremely careful when asking people questions about particular attributes of products. Improvements in technique may have to be in the

32 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS area of non-verbal responses. If people cannot express themselves in words it may be possible for them to do so in some other way. In addition, techniques are being developed to measure responses which are inde- pendent of people's own volition. A psychogalvanometer is an instrument which involves the fitting of electrodes to the wrists to measure the variation of rate of perspiration which is quite involuntary and responds to outside stimuli. The difficulty is that we cannot always ascertain what is a positive and what is a negative response we only know there is a response. Another technique involves the measurement of pupil dilation. The pupil of the eye dilates when exposed to strong light but until recently it was not fully appreciated that it also responds to stimuli such as advertise- ments, sounds or smells, all of which can cause minute changes in pupil dilation. DISCUSSION MR. S. V. BRASCH: To what extent are psychologists used in the interpretation of consumer research tests? THE LF•CTURER: Psychologists and people of other disciplines have been employed for instance, in the use of the pupil dilation technique which is derived from medicine rather than from psychology. Psychologists are not used a great deal for run-of-the- mill product testing, but they have been used in determining attitudes to perfumes, how these can be categorised and how people express differences between them. In comparative product testing they are rarely used. In concept testing, on the other hand, they are often used. MR. R. CLARK: Mrs. Ludford mentioned the effect of claims on acceptance of products. What are your views? THE LECTURER: We must first establish the objectives of product testing. On the one hand, in blind product testing, we are usually trying to determine whether a product is thought better, and in what respects it is seen to be better, than either a competitor or the standard product. On the other hand, you can give two different samples of people exactly the same product, but say something different about it, either in the form of a concept statement or an advertisement. One may then en- counter a different playback from each sample which can only be due to the secondary influence and not to the product itself. This is not so much product testing as testing the additional stimulus. MR. C. PUGH: What are your views on the use of staff shops or local shops as a way of combining the concept with product development and seeing if you can get some idea of its saleability, without going to the expense of really selling it? TH• LECTURER: I do not favour using staff shops, mini markets, and so on. The difficulty is that staff shops almost certainly have customers who are very well acquainted with your products and are certainly more aware of them than the population at large, and are thus not representative of the population. Local shops are better but one must be very precise in establishing the objectives of a test, as a local shop is unlikely to be representative of all shops it is better to use a number of shops throughout the country rather than use a local one merely because it is handy and because the manager agrees to cooperate. A difficulty arises because you cannot put a product into a shop without giving it proper packaging and a brand name, supporting it with advertising and possibly other forms of promotion. The cost of