Sensory capability
What kind of panelist are you
2020/05/27
The panelist (also called as taster and tester) is the major tool of a sensory test, who is a person who contributes his/her objective or subjective sensory perceptions/response to sample(s) qualitatively and quantitatively. The panelists can be grouped into 5 categories:
1.consumer-style panelist
They are general consumers, do not need to be trained but need to be screened, need to be the product user or al least the potential user, can be employed to collect consumer’s response directly during the product concept forming stage or product launching stage, 100 will be the number that usually employed at least.
2.naïve panelist
They can be organization employees or community members or consumers that you can find, do not need to be trained but need to be screened, need to be the product user or al least the potential user, can be employed to collect consumer’s possible response during the RD stage (employed by most of RD folks), 50 will be the number that usually employed at least.
3.experienced panelist
They can be organization employees or community members, will be screened for basic discriminative capability and be trained with simple requirements, can be employed to collect difference tests results during RD or QC stages (employed by most of technical folks), 30 will be the number that usually employed at least.
4.trained panelist
They can be organization employees or community members, will be screened for discriminative/sensitive capability and be trained with certain requirements, can be employed to collect objective data via discrimination tests/descriptive tests/sensitivity tests results during RD or QC stages, 8~15 will be the number that usually employed at least, will need more resources while can produce more useful data.
5.expert panelist
They need to accumulate years’ experience or possess special sensory capabilities, usually will be so called wine master/tea master/coffee master, can be employed for judgement during material QC or mixing stage, hard to be found in the population, hard to share capability with others, will be focus on art more that science, not easy to be employed by FMCG companies.
