18 - Personal and home care products in context

Abstract

Contextual factors are key when experiencing personal and home care products, as they interact with the fragranced product and person-related factors in determining use, enjoyment, and emotional responses. This chapter first addresses the importance of capturing the whole consumer experience by evaluating the fragrance under natural conditions. However, context is generally neglected and absent in many consumer tests that are conducted in central location tests (CLTs). Another approach is to implement consumer tests in natural conditions, or in home use tests (HUTs). Tests conducted at home, however, present many practical challenges in addition to time and cost constraints, because of the lack of control of individual and cultural differences in habits and rituals and the different contexts of use. In addition, these tests do not foster product discrimination and qualitative description in comparison with CLTs. The chapter next raises the question of whether intermediate approaches between CLTs and HUTs could be created by adding contextual variables in CLTs. Different test alternatives, such as evoking or mimicking/simulating contexts in CLTs, are therefore considered. These approaches retain the idea of a controlled setup, while immersing consumers in a given context. Studies illustrating these approaches are presented herein and show better levels of discrimination to those observed with CLTs with good qualitative descriptions allowing the reworking of perfume. The chapter ends with recommendations and perspectives for future studies dedicated to the use of immersive techniques (this discussion could be completed with Chapter 16 from Hartmann and Siegrist and Chapter 23 from Hehn et al., dealing with Virtual Reality).