Nominations for Best Fragrance Papers

At the recent ESOMAR Fragrance Research conference in March, the two nominations for the John and Mary Goodyear award of Best International paper were presented.

The nominations went to the paper titled: Do Producers and consumers speak the same language? How consumers decode semiotic types of flagrance advertising?By Maria Papanthymou, Head of Research, Optimedia, Russia and the paper: Reading between the lines. What else you can get out of the quantitative flagrance trials ?By Robert Cockcroft, Global Homecare Market Research Manager, Quest International Flagrances, UK

Maria Papanthymou explains that multi-national communication is a standard practice in the fragrance industry and asks how multi-national messages are perceived in local markets?

The presentation examines the phenomenon of female fragrance advertising from two sides: what producers presented and what the audience received. Firstly, the symbolic structure of fragrance advertising is described and the semiotic typology is examined. Secondly, audience reactions to the different types of ads are analyzed, using the example of the Russian market. The combination of two stages provides a better understanding of advertising characteristics underlying audience perception.

Robert Cockcroft examines the fact that many market research agencies, fragrance houses and client companies conduct product tests to assess the suitability of fragrances for particular uses. In most cases, the prime objective is to ascertain which of a range of fragrances the best for a particular brand or product is.

This paper is about using a set of well tried statistical methods to gain a much deeper understanding of the market the product is tested in, the disparate views on products and ultimately how to adapt a fragrance for particular purposes. The paper is based on the results of hundreds of in-use tests in scores of countries around the world. The aim of this work is to improve the quality of feedback from product tests among consumers by focussing effort to try and better understand: the perceptions of respondents who have tested the stimuli samples; and the contexts in which the tests have been carried out such as brand, other product use and respondent profile.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.