REVISTA DYNA MANAGEMENT

Key words:

Marketing sensorial, segmentación de mercado, mapas de preferencias, atributos sensoriales, análisis de componentes principales, consumo de café, Sensory marketing, market segmentation, preference mapping, sensory attributes, principal components analysis, coffee consumption

Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

RESEARCH ARTICLES

ABSTRACT:
Traditionally in the food and beverages industry, companies seek to optimize the quality of its products, by either improving its internal processes or conducting laboratory experiments. This approach has the limitation that the “voice of the customer” is put behind. Recently, sensory marketing, defined as the discipline that ensures that products reach the market with features and attributes preferred by consumers, is complementing this traditional approach. Basically, sensory marketing uses the principles of nutrition, physiology, psychology and statistics, in order to objectively characterize foods and beverages, based on the five human senses.
Here it is conducted an empirical research that is related to the coffee market. Specifically, we investigate associations among coffee attributes and Latin-American consumer preferences. Four market segments provided assessments for different coffee drinks, by using ten sensory attributes. Results allow us to identify which ones are the preferred features by each segment; similarities and differences among the investigated attributes are also highlighted. We find that two market segments (farmers and producers) prefer types of coffee, on which attributes are strongly present (aroma and residual flavour). In contrast, the segment students prefer more generic coffees (or commodities). Our results are similar to those reached in other researches, which we found during the literature review.
In respect to the conclusions, this case study is more illustrative than compelling. The main contribution is illustrating the suitability of sensory methods for doing effective market segmentations.

Keywords: Sensory marketing, market segmentation, preference mapping, sensory attributes, principal components analysis, coffee consumption.