Food Product Development: From the Consumers Aspect

Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, Food Engineering Department, 07425, Antalya, Turkey

^* Corresponding author: tugba.aktar@alanya.edu.tr

Abstract

Product development involves the design activities of “new” products as well as the functionalization of the valid ones. This concept is highly associated with the demand of the consumers towards the product such as health promotion or sensory attraction. Moreover, consumers are the decider of product survival in the market. Therefore, with the sensory testing, we assess the consumers’ response which indicates the market success of the developed food. Hence, a food developer who comes up with a new product idea (including new and functionalization of the current one) needs to make sure of the consumer acceptance via sensory evaluation tasks. Sensory evaluation practices are usually the final and the determinant step of product success and acceptance. A comprehensive sensory practice should be well structured in terms of technical assessment as well as correct panelist group selection to be representative enough to give consumer’s response. Even though this aim sound to be a straight forward concept, the eating activity is quite complex and dynamic to mimic on the selected panelists as a consumer. So far, investigators collected enough data to understand only some of the senses however, sensory understanding of the several sense involving parameters like texture and aroma is still uncovered. This talk is established to understand the importance of the sensory approach which is done in practice to decide on the new/functionalized product to be placed in the market or not for business success.