Understanding The Sensory Perception Of Topically Applied Products

Topical creams are used to deliver both functional and cosmetic benefits to skin, in order to be effective, it is important that they can deliver sensorial profiles that delight the consumer and promote repeat use and regime compliance. It is known that the rheological profile of creams has a key influence on the sensorial and emotional responses elicited during application, the study of this relationship is called psychorheology.

Limited research exists correlating technical information on rheological and sensory properties of topically applied skin products with consumer liking and there is currently no published data including consumers emotional response. Predictive modelling can be utilised to allow predictions of perceived sensory properties from rheological measures without the time and expense of sensory panels and previous research has shown that sensory attributes describing primary interactions with skins creams (e.g. taking the cream from the packaging) were found to strongly correlate with rheological parameters and could be used to produce reliable predicative models (Greenaway 2010).

However, the predictive ability of secondary interactions (e.g. application to the skin) were less strong and less reliable. Therefore, this project will firstly measure the sensory properties of topically applied skin creams to understand sensory perception and its relationship to consumer's emotional response and drivers of liking. This fundamental biological learning will be correlated to instrumental techniques with the aim of producing a predictive model to reliably predict both primary and secondary sensory properties of skin creams applications that are linked to consumer drivers of liking and emotional response.

The benefits of which include a greater understanding of how to drive compliance and improved sustainability in the product development process through the removal of the need for large scale in-vivo sensory evaluation. In the future, this fundamental biological learning could be used to underpin research exploring physiological and neurological markers of key sensory and emotional response terms to topically applied skin products. Key project objectives include:

1. Use of quantitative descriptive analysis to develop of a validated sensory lexicon which describing the attributes of topical creams during application.

2. Development of a consumer-defined, product specific emotion lexicon which allows for the quantification of emotional responses to specific sensory profiles.

3. Define existing and develop novel instrumental approaches to measuring the rheological properties of topical creams which accurately simulate secondary sensory interactions.

4. Develop predictive models that define the rheological properties required to elicit specific emotional and sensorial responses in users