Any form of test marketing has its drawbacks. Marketers of food products often use taste testing as a way of predicting consumer behavior with reference to the new product, and this approach has its dangers as well. People select foods based on personal preferences, and when we are talking about foodstuffs, we are really talking about personal preferences over group preferences. That is, each person has his or her own particular likes and dislikes, and some products will appeal to them and some will not. There is not always a clear population dedicated to a certain taste as there might be for other products. To be effective in predicting consumer behavior, a taste test must have a very large base population taking the test to give a good idea of the percentage of the consumer population that will be interested in the product.
For that matter, the market must understand that it is difficult to ascertain from a taste test what percentage of the population would be attracted to the product. When a taste test is held in a supermarket, a certain percentage of those taking the test will like the product and a certain percentage will not. This does not indicate the percentage of the population as a whole that likes or does not like the product, however. If the product is, say, chili, only those people who have some might already like chili will take the taste test in the first place. A larger group will shy away from the test because they simply do not like chili under any circumstances. The results can thus be misunderstood or misapplied if this fact is not kept in mind.
In addition, the fact that a consumer likes the taste of a certain food when sampling it in a testing situation does not mean that the same consumer will buy the product. It is an indication that the consumer will not reject the product outright because it does not taste good, but there are other factors that will figure in the decision to buy or not to buy, ...