Study on Psychological Bias Caused by Notification of Brand Name in Sensory Evaluation of Mango Fruit Drink

The objective of this study is to examine whether brand name have an effect on the evaluation of
sensory-based attributes in the process of purchasing a product. Brand name plays an important role
even it causes psychological bias in sensory evaluation of mango fruit drink. In this study we
conducted five different sensory test-blind test, open test, interchange sample test, duplicate test and
brand recognition test to check the bias caused by notification of brand name. Same respondents
were evaluated for all the tests. Sensory evaluation was done on attributes like color, smell, taste,
sweetness, mouth feel, viscosity and overall acceptance using the 1-9 hedonic scale. Tests results
proved that brand name does cause bias during sensory evaluation of mango fruit drink. People knew
mango drinks by their brand name and not by their taste or product quality. More successful the brand
more rating it got during open and interchange sample test. After conducting the test it is observed
that different product may taste more or less the same but brand name is unique which guides the
sensory evaluation. People were not able to identify the brand by tasting it in brand recognition test.
On an average only 20% of the consumers successfully identified the brand by taste. The result of
every test proves that brand name plays an important role in sensory evaluation because consumers
tend to get biased towards a well-known brand as they trust the brand. There is tendency to rate
higher a famous brand in all the attributes. It is also being concluded that to be successful in market
product quality as well as brand image plays an important role.