Consumer acceptance of food bars

Increased use of conjoint analysis during the concept testing stage of food product development raises the question of whether conjoint analysis results translate into successful product development. Five food bar concepts from a previous conjoint analysis study targeted for the "Overall" panel, "Female" segment, "Male" segment, "Label Readers" segment and "Calorie Health Nuts" segment, were used for consumer testing. Standardized packaging was also developed to test elements not easily perceived from the product itself, i.e., low fat, low calorie and other nutritional information. The "Female #1 - commercial (Fiber One)" bar had the highest overall acceptance, 6.9 on a 9-point hedonic scale. Packaging significantly increased all ratings. Cluster analysis results were compared with segmentation from conjoint analysis. Similar results were found, showing there were clusters of consumers specifically interested in prototypes developed for specific conjoint analysis segments, which supports that conjoint analysis results translate into actual products.