Activities

In February 2009 I gave a ‘guest lecture’ to the Business Management and Marketing MSc degrees at the Norwich Business School at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.  The lecture focused on market research and product testing within the context of a session on market orientation in a course unit entitled ‘Marketing Management of New Products’.  The lecture was a dual effort with the course tutor and senior lecturer, Dr. Fiona Lettice.  The main focus of Dr. Lettice’s research is in new product development and innovation management.  The combination of Dr. Lettice’s experiences in the automotive industry, and mine within food and drink, led to some interesting discussions and comparisons.

In May 2008, Nigel Lambert and I ran a workshop entitled ‘Using Depth Interviews to Explore Personal Perceptions of Experiences’ as part of the IFST Professional Food Sensory Group one day conference ‘Great Expectations – How to use expectation to build a better product’.  The conference was held in the West Midlands and was an interesting mix of oral presentations and workshops.  Nigel and I pooled our diverse experience and knowledge (social science, biochemistry, counselling, sensory evaluation, market research, etc.) to expose participants to in-depth interviewing techniques and to discuss and explore how these practices could be applied in the context of researching sensory and consumer expectations. Nigel Lambert is a food, health and society consultant who is local to East Anglia.

In 2009 I participated in the evaluation of proposals in the activity area Food, Agriculture, and Biotechnology, for the European Commission Framework Seven Programme (FP7).

Margaret Everitt and I developed, and are offering, a one day workshop called ‘Put the S Factor into Marketing’.  The workshop is aimed at marketers/market researchers and product developers. The goal is to broaden the awareness of the use of the senses, and realise the opportunities sensory evaluation offers for product and brand development of consumer goods.  Margaret is an experienced and well respected consultant in consumer research and sensory product guidance.  Click here for a flyer outlining the workshop.