Taste tests: Impacts of consumer perceptions and preferences on brand positioning strategies.

Taste tests are being increasingly used by marketers to influence consumers to change their preferences toward their brands. This research indicates how perceptual and preferential taste tests can be used in conjunction with visual maps to provide support to marketing managers for making better brand positioning and targeting decisions on the basis of taste for different segments of consumers. An empirical blind taste-test study is used to illustrate the concepts. The preferential taste judgment part of the empirical study is designed to capture violations of the 'Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives' (IIA) effect that is commonly observed in consumers' actual purchases. The present paper also uses a hypothetical example to indicate the importance of considering the location of consumer 'ideal points' before making formulation changes in a brand as part of a targeting strategy. Various managerial implications of using the suggested perceptual preferential taste-mapping analyses are also discussed. Appropriate measurements of consumer tastes provide insights for identifying and targeting viable market segments.