The Influence of Chocolate and Wafer on customers : An Application of Kansei Engineering

Abstract: This project has been assigned for the thesis group by one of the leading Swedishconfectionery company Cloetta AB, and the main goal of this work has been to investigate“What feelings trigger more chocolate in wafer-based chocolates” with chocolate consumers.The Kansei Engineering study was used to achieve this and should deliver useful informationfor the market research and the development department at Cloetta AB.The Kansei Engineering methodology origins in Japan and is about gathering and analyzinginformation from the customer impressions and feelings about a certain product. Gatheredresults considering the physical properties and customer’s impressions are analyzed in relationto each other through various statistical methods.In practice this project has been executed through planning and performing surveys onchocolate consumers and the gathered data has later been analyzed accordingly to the KanseiEngineering Methodology. Statistical methods such as factor analysis using the statisticalsoftware SPSS and regression analysis using QTI through KESo software have been utilizedfor the analysis.In the factor analysis the so-called Kansei-words, which describe impressions of the waferbasedchocolates, were reduced from twenty to five words; preferable, lifestyle, disadvantage,rewarding and quality. These words were connected with the properties given from CloettaAB; number of wafers and amount of chocolate; and used in the final survey. The factoranalysis also included benchmarking of several competing products within wafer-basedchocolates.The final survey resulted in nine varieties of chocolate samples, all with varieties in thenumber of wafers and the amount of chocolate. Input data from this survey was handledwithin KESo software and analyzed with the QTI method.The results were comprehended and interpreted in text format and delivered to Cloetta AB.From the QTI results it may be concluded that feelings which trigger more chocolate amountin wafer-based chocolates are preferable, rewarding and quality.