Closing the ‘say-do’ gap through sensory evaluation

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Closing the ‘say-do’ gap through sensory evaluation

5 Aug 2026

Maggie Glisan

Maggie Glisan covers consumer trends and emerging markets for the Commercial Baking media group. She spent the bulk of her 15-year career as the senior food editor at Better Homes and Gardens, where she was responsible for producing, writing and editing stories and developing recipes for the monthly magazine and special interest publications. Prior to that she worked as graphic designer and assistant art director in the Food Group at Better Homes and Gardens, where she took on an increasing role in content creation and editorial development.

KANSAS CITY, MO — The warm, yeasty aroma of sourdough. The pillowy give of a chiffon cake. The sharp crack of a well-baked biscotti. Before consumers even take a bite, their senses have been activated, and whether they realize it or not, they’re already forming an opinion.

That response is exactly what sensory science works to understand. As the discipline matures, more commercial bakers are treating sensory evaluation not just as a final sign-off but also as a product development tool built in from the start.

For decades, sensory evaluation in food product development came down to one question: How much do consumers like this? The nine-point hedonic scale — with “dislike extremely” on one end and “like extremely” on the other — became the industry standard, giving bakers a reliable way to compare.

That framework, however, has its limits.

“For 70 years, the field operated under that mode,” said David Lundahl, founder and CEO of InsightsNow. “But in the past five years there’s been a radical change that goes beyond ‘liking’ to include behavioral scoring.”

Widening the lens

Lundahl — who holds a PhD in sensory science and has spent his career studying the distance between what consumers say they’ll do and what they actually do — calls this the “say-do gap.” Two cookies might score nearly identical on a liking scale, he said, but the occasion, setting and consumer’s state of mind can matter just as much. One person grabbing breakfast on the run and another reaching for an indulgent end-of-day treat will evaluate the same product through an entirely different lens.

“We found it’s better to segment moments than people,” Lundahl said. “What type of moment is this product designed for? That’s a more powerful lens than demographic targeting.”

That thinking extends beyond individual products into brand equity. Lundahl calls it a “sensory brand fingerprint,” the distinctive, recognizable sensory signature that defines a product and sets it apart in a crowded category. Building that fingerprint is one thing; protecting it during reformulation, ingredient swaps or line extensions is another.

None of that, however, makes traditional sensory methodology obsolete. Trained sensory panels, discrimination testing and descriptive analysis still do quite a bit of the heavy lifting; context is simply what makes that data actionable in the real world.

Driving purchases

For commercial bakers and their ingredient suppliers, there are typically two main modes of sensory evaluation, each with an important role to play. The first is internal panels. These are composed of individuals within who are trained to objectively describe and measure product attributes. The second mode is consumer panels. Unlike the trained groups, these panels are meant to reflect the general population and capture real-world preferences to reveal whether what the trained panel measured will drive purchases.

Abby Bauer, director of sensory and consumer science for North America at Cargill, leads a program that deploys both modes. Her trained internal panel functions as what she calls “human instruments,” assessing the intensity of specific sensory attributes across appearance, aroma, taste, flavor and texture. These screened tasters come in with personal preferences and preconceived notions, so it’s important for her team to calibrate panelists around a shared set of objective descriptors to keep subjectivity from seeping into the data.

“We tell them: ‘We know you have opinions, and those opinions matter, but for this purpose, we don’t need your opinion. We just need you to mark the intensity,’” Bauer said. “The information from those panels is then paired with consumer testing data to determine not just what’s different between products but also whether those differences actually matter to the people buying them.”

When sensory evaluation is baked into the R&D process, new product developers can close the “say-do gap” and set their new product apart on the shelf.

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