SENSORY TESTING- A STATISTICIAN'S APPROACH 229 in assessing general acceptability would be very much governed by many other things, some of which, like brand image and promise, are controlled from the commercial side. We have confirmation that the basic characteristics of the smell acceptability have remained similar in in-use situations, to the answers that we obtained in the small-scale testing such as described. What does not always follow is that this has the direct effect on the general acceptability of the product that one hoped for one finds that because the final consumer is using the product in a total use situation (as dis- tinct from just smelling it), we have a halo effect operating in both directions. Perfume acceptability may be having a "halo effect" upon the "acceptability in use" of the product but, of course, also vice versa. Therefore the fact that on some occasions we get discrepancies between the overall in-use acceptability and the perfume test is something that we have to live with. MR. P. MoxE¾: I understand from what you said that you expunge people if they are not necessarily able to give you what one might call a distinct answer. What concerns me is that a great many products are bought in this business on the strength of the fragrance, and I can understand why you want to get your statistics right to start with. I wonder if statistically you are not building a false image into your preliminary testing. TrtE L•c'ruR•R: What you say is very true. First of all I would say that we do not exclude people from the panel except in the sense that we only look at their prefer- ences if they show evidence of being able to discriminate. They do come back the next time and are again put into the test because we do not exclude the people who last time were unable to discriminate. \¾e find that you have a variable level not only of acceptability but also of discrimination - and this is something that happens in real life as you yourself have indicated. Sometimes people are strongly motivated about a product's smell, sometimes they could not care less whether it smells nice or not. What we are saying is that, in so far as they do make their choice in terms of smell, we wish to have the smell most acceptable to the majority of people. If they are not choosing on the basis of smell, that is just too bad. We can not do anything about that. What we try to make sure is that on the occasions that people are choosing on the basis of smell, this product will be as acceptable as we know how to make it.