ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of affective tests is to assess the personal response (preference and/ or acceptance) by current or potential customers of a product, a product idea, or specific product characteristics. Each year, consumer tests are used more and more. This chapter gives rough guidelines for the design of consumer tests and in-house panel tests. The need to sample properly from the consuming population, in principle excludes the use of employees and residents local to the company offices, technical center, or plants. However, because of high cost and long turnaround time of consumer tests, companies see a real advantage in using the employees or local population for at least part of their affective testing. In most cases, home-use tests (or home placement tests) represent the ultimate in consumer tests. One key to decoding consumer diagnostics and consumer acceptance is to measure the perceived sensory properties of a product using a more objective sensory tool.
