On a Sunday morning, the doorbell rings. UPS just threw on my porch a box that contains the precious item I ordered online less than 24 h ago. It is the latest technological tool that everybody wants. Its reviews, which I read thoroughly, are outstanding, five stars across the board. I hurry to the door, grab the box and open it frantically. Now I have it! Let’s see how it works and what new avenues it will open in my daily life. At the same time, my son, a 4‐year old toddler, grabs the cardboard protecting the device and turns it into a spaceship, which will keep him entertained for a couple hours.

At first sight, the new device is appealing, with a tasteful and modern design, luxury colour and lines, smooth and pleasant texture to the touch. When I get to the instructions, they seem less intuitive than expected. As the new generation shopper that I am, I want to be able to operate immediately. I do not conceptualize it but the on/off bottom seems a little cheap. It might be the noise it makes or just the material itself. I persevere for a few hours. Ultimately, this tool doesn’t revolutionize my life. Some of its functionalities are redundant with my previous device. It’s not worth the effort. I might use it but it will eventually die as quickly as it emerged.

Meanwhile, my son has made the most out of the cardboard, which, after being a spaceship became an artistic and colourful fort and a car track. But its appeal has died as well, leaving space for new outbursts of imagination.

Nowadays, consumers crave for unique, authentic, customized products. Consumers actively search and seek everywhere rather than passively responding to advertising. In that context, big consumer packaged‐goods companies struggle to sell their products. The market is inundated with a never‐ending variety of offers making it more challenging to be visible and leaving very little room for innovation. For small, as well as for giant companies, the motto seems to be ‘innovate or die’. However, launching a real breakthrough innovation has become a hard‐to‐achieve and hard‐to‐predict holy grail.

For years, in the pre‐social media, pre‐Amazon era, demand for innovation was lower. Big companies could get distributed much more easily than smaller ones, and consumers were used to seeing the same products on the market.

Today, consumers are more informed, more aware and have wider access to very small brands and sellers. Through cooperative websites, anybody can create and sell from one side of the world to the other. This causes challenges to brick and mortar traditional stores and major market share points lost by larger brands.

For decades, decisions on innovative products were based primarily on the intuition of a few creators; or on the intimate conviction of a few top managers. Today, the path to innovation has become way riskier. Developing new products, testing them, weighing market response, predicting failure or success has become critical for managers to ensure success and prevent yearly losses. It has become vital for big brands to invest in robust R&D teams and to consolidate their experience to be able to launch great new products and survive.

The challenge is of course to foster creators and creative teams, but first and foremost to be very solid in supporting the creative process to ensure its success. Until today, teams in charge of evaluation methods as to how new products fit into consumers’ life have been very pragmatic and worked mostly on an empirical basis. There are no real common manuals on how to systematically approach consumers all along the creative development. Within each company and among the scientific community with the expertise in this domain, knowledge is passed along via word of mouth through a network of connoisseurs. Everybody moves along following their instinct on how best to test and predict. Given the stakes, it is time to issue systematic approaches. This is precisely what this manual is about. Of course, any method and approach will never be carved into stone, as for the following of the creative process, one needs to remain very flexible and open‐minded. Each product category, each invention or creation needs to be approached as a unique case. However, a methodological background is necessary to ensure robustness in the process and to circumvent basic pitfalls.

This manual will therefore dive into the global (Chapter 1) and specific (Chapters 2 and 3) aspects of sensory and consumer test designs: how do we test, when, where and with whom. All of it depends on the objectives we want to pursue and the methods we consider. The testing strategies must be developed (Chapter 4) based on where we are in the development process going from a small‐scale to a large‐scale approach. Very practical elements will be covered such as tools to be incorporated, as well as deliverables and budget. Chapter 5 goes beyond intrinsic product quality with a more holistic picture of real‐life market factors. Chapter 6 concludes with considerations to decide whether to outsource studies.

Before diving into the subject matter, I would like to thank the following people for their inspiration, support and for their challenging and curious minds. Everything goes back to them and how generously they taught me at some point in life. I learned to remain open‐minded while they instilled in me the desire to always question, grow and learn.

Gilles Trystram, General Director at AgroParisTech. During my Ph.D. research and years after, I have kept from him the love for research as a means of always questioning apparent certainties and applying rigour.

Douglas Rutledge, Director of Analytical Chemistry Department at AgroParisTech. Thanks to Douglas, biostatistics have become approachable to me and a true means of rationalizing complex realities such as sensoriality and consumers’ minds.

Joseph Hossenlopp defines himself as an independent thinker. His support, advice and guidance have forged in me respect for knowledge, an instinct to always seek for the right answers, as set out by the best specialists, unfolding reasoning, in order to build a new enriched opinion.

Agnès Giboreau, Living Lab at the Institut Paul Bocuse. Agnès rapidly became one of my mentors when we first met in the food industry at the time of the sensory and consumer methods genesis, being deployed in the industry. Agnes is one of those pioneers who extended these methods to all new fields such as the auto industry and now the hotel industry. Her rigor and curiosity of mind stand before me as an immense source of inspiration.

Jacques Barthélémy was the head of the Sensory Evaluation Department at Nestlé until he retired. He left us in the dawn of 2016. Jacques was a pioneer of the implementation of sensory and consumer methods in the food industry when just freshly established in the academia. He fought against all the obstacles as he was convinced of its relevance. Many in our generation grew up and were fashioned in his pugnacity.

Mara Applebaum, AVP Product Performance Evaluation at L’Oreal USA. Mara has been a colleague, a manager and a true mentor all along my journey in the industry. I have learned so much thanks to her immense knowledge, her incredible open‐mindedness and desire for permanent innovation and experimentation in our field. Thanks to her very American ‘can do’ attitude, many of us have learned how to transpose academic guidelines into the pragmatic world.

Annie Hillinger, Partner, Heads Up! Research, Inc. Annie has a very rigorous and pragmatic approach to research in the consumer field. Working with her has been an incredible opportunity to grow and learn from her sense of careful listening, moderation and translation of consumer insight into action and vision for the future.

My former colleagues in the industry. I have had the immense privilege of travelling through food and cosmetic industries. Multiple windows have been opened into infinite fields of application of sensory and consumer methods way beyond the domains where they took off their first steps. All I know, I do owe it to all these people I have met and worked with along my amazing journey.

My family who is my unfailing daily support. My kids, who at times had to endure my professional dedication, have always carried me with their love and recognition. I am grateful to see them grow up with passion, ambitions, aspirations, positive values and critical minds. My husband, who for years encouraged me to share all I have had the privilege of learning and thus gave impetus to this project. My uncle Edgardo Flores‐Rivas, former ambassador, who was an unconditional English advisor all along. And finally my friend Jacqueline Denham for designing the beautiful cover.

All these people, for whom I am so grateful, have a common wonderful asset: a unique sensitivity to small sensorial pleasures of life like sharing a sophisticated flavoured home‐made meal, while appreciating the subtlest notes enhanced by a rare vintage wine, the sound of a harmonious musical note or the view of a luminous horizon.