Givaudan Investigate Kid’s Soft Drink Flavour Preferences

Given free choice, Banana, Apple and Strawberry were considered to be the most popular fruits in blends, with combinations of berries being the most popular both across the range of countries and also in the seven individual countries, with only one exception.

1 Oct 2009 --- Trying to identify new flavours that will appeal to kids is often fraught with difficulty. Product developers are left wondering just what drives children’s preferences when it comes to beverages, especially when the taste element is isolated from current brand and peer influences.

Do all kids have the same preferences? Do manufacturers need to take account of differences in palettes between different countries?

These questions led to Givaudan’s pan-European research project into children’s beverage taste preferences. ‘Project Kiddo’ was conducted across seven European countries – the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia. It involved over 1700 children aged between seven and twelve working in a fun, interactive environment.

Central to the work was the use of Givaudan’s proprietary mini-VASTM, which allowed the kids to create, sample and compare the flavours they designed in a real-time, iterative process.

The research provided an accurate insight into how children from different parts of Europe regarded various flavours. It also led to some surprises for the kids and researchers alike.

For example, in a number of instances, there was a wide gap between what the kids imagined in advance would be exciting and delicious fruit juice mixes, and what they actually chose as their favourites upon sampling from a wide selection of possible flavour combinations.

For the most part there are common groups of flavours that are universally liked across all countries with some local variations of the most preferred types. Conversely, there were found to be some combinations that should be avoided by drinks manufacturers in search of profitable new product development opportunities for the children’s market.

However the kids were asked to suggest blends where one fruit was already defined, there were some interesting results. Red fruit blends scored higher, for example Cherry/Strawberry, than citrus combinations but it was also clear that the kids tended to prefer combinations they were familiar with over unfamiliar fruits.

Key to the ranking of different flavour combinations was finding a consistency in the mind of the young panelists between the descriptive sound (the idea) of a fruit flavour, its smell, and the final flavour when tasting the actual product.

The study found some ‘star performing’ fruit juice blends with some surprising combinations which Givaudan is currently using to advise its clients in addressing the burgeoning children’s soft fruit drinks market.

The next phase of Givaudan’s Kiddo project involved taking the results of this in depth consumer understanding to develop a new range of natural flavours for children’s beverages and making them available to the company’s clients.

During 2010 Givaudan plans to continue to launch further flavours under the Givaudan ByNatureTM platform, leveraging the true insight gained from the Kiddo project. Exciting new flavours are expected to include red fruits, tropical and of course citrus, all allowing a ‘natural’ declaration on the finished product.

Keith Moffitt, Givaudan’s Beverages Marketing Director for Europe, Africa and the Middle East commentss: “What’s exciting about these flavours is that children have played a big part in their technical creation, which we believe is quite unique. Ultimately, Kiddo allowed us to identify combinations that both sounded good to kids (might entice them to buy or encourage their parents to buy the product) and also actually tasted good to kids! In a crowded marketplace, our clients need true points of difference to stand out. Projects such as Kiddo show how Givaudan can provide real differentiation to help our customers build bigger brands.”