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SenseTest is your sensory partner
We provide tools and services to help you on product quality evaluation, product development and innovation, or simply to evaluate your suppliers/competitors performance.
Growing on our own expertise and answering specific market demand, SenseTest operates with food and non-food products using state of the art facilities with highly educated and experienced staff, fulfilling all the international standards.
Last year alone we performed 600 essays, involving more than 1500 unique references in retail, production and services sectors (alimentary and non alimentary), obtaining 33000 results for evaluation.
Segmented and representative population of tasters
In house technology development providing the best results
State of the art laboratory for all your sensory testing requirements, compliant with the best international standards
Taking sensory tests everywhere
SenseBus is a mobile sensory testing room. It is available to circulate within national and international markets allowing the use of Sensory Evaluation with no geographical restriction.
These features give answer to today’s market tendencies permitting the objective collection of results from different consumers segments.
Areas of expertise
SenseTest offers a wide range of sensory tools: descriptive, comparative and acceptance tests; quality attributes analysis and definition; sensory shelf-life evaluation; and use and training of expert tasters for detailed technical sensorial tests, among others.
SenseTest works with a large consumer database, allowing for segmentation into various groups, and within segments with special needs, such as children, elderly or celiac. Our services are based on laboratory evaluations, central location and home use testing.
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Produtct analysis in a controlled environment (descriptive, comparative and acceptance tests).
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Consumer tests for additional segments with special needs (children, babies, celiac, incontinent's).
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Palatability tests for Pet-Food (cats & dogs). Studies of preference and animal behaviour related to different types of pet-food.
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SenseLab
Evaluation of acceptance in the test room
The test is performed on hedonic scale and independent evaluation of samples by tasters with use of nonparametric statistical tests for detection of significant differences in punctuation compared to one or more predefined business targets.
The evaluation parameters can be global or by attributes, not being in these situations guaranteed the independence between factors.
SenseHome
Home Use Tests
Like tests in the test room these evaluations are made independently by consumers using non-parametric statistical tests for detection of significant differences in punctuation compared to a pre-defined commercial target.
The use of solutions in home use tests is especially adapted to prolonged consumption of products (eg.: chewing gum) or products whose usability is not adapted to controlled tasting room (eg.: diapers, toiletries, cleaning products, etc. ).
SenseSegments
Tests with special segments
Children
In every product from the child range (food / non food) Sense Test has a specialized technical team working with children of all ages, adapting each test protocol to the child‘s age.
The option of using children in studies of this range is due to the fact that they are the real end-user consumer, which has a direct effect on the decision of acceptance, and a different perception at all levels different from an adult. Children are who decide.
Celiac
Knowing that sensory test in the “Gluten Free“ eating area were extremely poor, Sense Test decided to create the “Celiac Taster‘s Club“.
The goal is to be able to form a tasters panel made up of people with gluten intolerance who give their opinion about different brands under study in terms of appearance, odor, texture and flavor, knowing that it only makes sense to develop "gluten free" products with the opinion of these consumers because of the difference of their eating habits.
Currently Sense Test has a database that exceeds one hundred celiac consumers used both in the execution of studies of sensory analysis to gluten-free products as well as in conducting group discussions on food habits of celiac.
SenseProfiling
SenseProfiling meets innovative and less time-consuming technics for sensory and emotional profiling supported on an exclusive software, evaluating Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).
In order to overcome the limitations of classical descriptive analysis methods, recent global efforts developed new technics to establish the descriptive profile of consumer goods which are less time consuming and more cost effective, considering “the consumer voice” and maximizing the perspective of products success in the market.
- Flash Profile
- CATA (Check-All-That-Apply)
- Face Reader
- Engineering Kansei
- Eye-Tracking
This set of recent technics were incorporated and articulated in the SenseProfiling service, allowing to respond to the costumers needs, shortening the "time to market”.
SenseBus
SenseBus is a mobile sensory testing room. It is available to circulate within national and international markets allowing the use of Sensory Evaluation with no geographical restriction.
These features give answer to today‘s market tendencies permitting the objective collection of results from different consumers segments.
SenseBus was designed in accordance with the international norm ISO 8589: “Sensory analysis — General guidance for the design of test rooms”,thus presenting all the necessary features to perform sensory testing:
- Temperature controlled reception room with test cabins.
- Online information system adaptable to the different types of testing.
- Independent room for preparation of samples.
- Built-in equipment for conservation of frozen and chilled products.
SenseBus is built on a light vehicle which may be operated by any user under the supervision of the Sense Test team. Sense Test has over a decade of experience in the business, having developed its competencies following the various international norms from this field of expertise.
SensePet
Due to a change in lifestyle in society there is a concern in buying made-up food that pleases pets. The Pet-Food industry has been offering an increasingly wide and diverse product range, making imperative to measure animal palatability and animal preferences for certain brands.
Sense Test has an independent panel of hundreds of dogs and cats.
These studies in which it is determined the preference of an animal between two samples follows a series of assumptions:
- Use of a heterogeneous pet’s panel previously selected – dogs or cats, juniors and adults, with a diversified weight, age and breed.
- The tests are performed in home use tests in order to minimize the impact of external variables (temperature, water, light).
- The owners of the dogs or cats from Sense Test‘s animal panel are awarded for each test session performed. Only the first tests that respect the test specifications will be considered valid.
SenseID
Through technical and scientifical experience and the academical training of our collaborators, Sense Test, Lda is equipped to support R&D activities in the following lines:
- Acceptance analysis and attribute screening
- Product remaking
- Sensory impact analysis and consummer expectations concerning the packaging, price, advertising, as well as other product characteristics.
- Description and evaluation of sensory differences in foodstuffs, in terms of attributes
- Analysis of the relation between physical and chemical, and sensorial attributes
- Establishing of relations between attributes and consummer acceptance
- Determination of sensory profiles for comparison between references
- Shelf-life studies
Our tasters
SenseTest keeps regular contact with hundreds of tasters living in the Porto area, where almost 2 million people live and work. They encompass a variety of strata (age, sex, profession, consumption habits, and others) that enable us to adapt easily to any circumstance.
The selection of tasters for each analysis develops in the form of a network, annually involving thousands of tasters. This diversity ensures the quality of the taster‘s choice with the expected repercussion in the analytical result.
SenseTest keeps a strictly professional structure. For each test performed, the taster is rewarded according to difficulty of the test, type of product and number of tests performed. The care in the choice of tasters garanties commitment, motivation and reliability in the analytical results. In the quality of each individual result lies the quality of our clients‘ decisions.
The panel structure of Sense Test, Ltd is professional in the sense that tasters are paid or awarded by each test session performed; tests with convenient tasters are not allowed. The first valid tasters which meet the specification to make the test are considered. Before each test session is a preliminary discussion between the test supervisor and the tasters is conducted. It is intended a perfect understanding by the tasters about the test to make eliminating any possible result adulteration
Pet tasters
Sense Test has an independent panel of hundreds of dogs and cats which can be segmented by various characteristics such as type of feed they eat, weight, age and other attributes.
We contact the owners of dogs that are in your database, explaining the study, then the person takes the samples home and register the opinion of the animal according to the study specifications.
Facilities
