Ensure that you’ve reflected on data collection and visual/financial modeling completed by the team. 

In the previous blog post, I have reflected on our methods of data collection and the progress in it. By the end of last week, I was able to complete the analysis of the data collected through our taste test, and applied our feedback from our taste test into making some of the design decisions of our food product. The method and results of the data collection from the taste test was reflected in blog post #2.

The second method of data collection – the consumer survey, wasn’t completed by the end of last week as Jia had missed one week of school. It had been completed this week, and I will further reflect on the data collection in this blog post.

Jia was able to create a consumer survey that was given to students in our class and also a few students that were hanging around in the hallway, as well as also some teachers to complete. It was an anonymous survey that they completed, and they could circle one option for each question. We then collected back the surveys and tallied up the number of responses for each choice of each question.

This consumer survey was able to provide some data and insight into the public and our intended audience’s – teenagers and young adults’ opinions on our food product.

 

 

 

 

The results of the consumer survey with a total of 15 responses are shown in the photo in the left. Some of the analysis that Jia had came to a conclusion in was:

“- To our food science class, taste is the most important component to them, followed by nutrition.
– Students in our class like Tang Yuan slightly to very much.
– Around 86% of students in our class have eaten Tang Yuan before.
– 2/3 of students in our class likes black sesame flavored Tang Yuan.
– Students would maybe eat Tang Yuan S’mores.
– 78% of students have eaten S’mores before.
– Soft and chewy, and crispy texture are most important to our consumers.
– 86% of students prefer s’mores with chocolate.”

Hence, this provides some insight into our audiences’ opinions of our food product, such as preferring chocolate in the s’more (from question 8), having the majority liking black sesame flavored Tang Yuans (from question 4), etc. It also provides some data over the pricing of the food product, which will later be useful in the financial modeling to determine the sales price for the food product.

Through this consumer survey, the data supports some of our design choices such as the flavors of the Tang Yuans. Through the collected data, we can see that although the majority of the people who we surveyed preferred black sesame flavored Tang Yuan, there are also 5 other people who preferred red bean flavored and peanut flavored. Therefore, we decided to still keep all 3 flavors of Tang Yuans for our Tang Yuan s’mores so that it would give the consumers more choices and also able to satisfy a larger range of consumers, such as those who aren’t a big fan of black sesame flavored Tang Yuan and would prefer red bean paste or peanut flavored Tang Yuan.

Moreover, in question 7, we can see that there is a split in the preferences in texture of the food product. 9 people chose soft and chewy, while 7 people chose crispy. Therefore, this gives us some idea into what method of cooking the Tang Yuan we should decide on for our food product. While boiling the Tang Yuan gives the soft and chewy rice texture of the Tang Yuan, frying the Tang Yuan also adds to a crispy texture on the outside, but also keeping the chewy rice texture on the inside. Therefore, as we observe the majority of people preferring soft and chewy and crispy textures, and there is an approximate split between the two choices, it also supports our decision for our food product of frying the Tang Yuan instead of boiling it, aligning from our decisions in the taste test as well.

Adding on, through the results of the suggested pricing for the food product in the consumer survey, Valeriana was able to complete the financial modeling part and determine a specific sales price for one Tang Yuan S’more. In the previous blog post, the calculations of the cost of production of one Tang Yuan S’more was shown.

Through research, it had been suggested that the optimal revenue price is around 35%. Moreover, in question 9 of the consumer survey, it asked how much the person being surveyed would be willing to pay for one Tang Yuan S’more. In the results collected, there had been one outlier out of all responses who said that they would be willing to pay 50 RMB for one Tang Yuan S’more. Thus, we did two different calculations with and without of this outlier to ensure that it wouldn’t create large effects in the data; and the mean price that people were willing to pay for one Tang Yuan S’more was 6 RMB (without the outlier) and 9.57 RMB (with the outlier).

While the production cost of one Tang Yuan S’more is at maximum 1.16 RMB, and with the 35% optimal revenue, the price of one Tang Yuan S’more only totals to approximately 2 RMB. However, considering other costs such as labor or marketing, and also aligning the suggested pricing from the consumer survey, the sales price for one Tang Yuan S’more was set at 6 RMB.

 

Do you feel that your product has met the goals you set at the start of the process? 

I think our food product was able to pretty well meet the goals that we set at the start of the project. We made necessary adjustments accordingly throughout the process of developing our food product, and in the end it was still able to fit our target audience and it was very close to what we had planned and thought of originally at the start.

• Did design choices still fit your target audience? 
• Yes we would say that our design choices still fit our target audience. The target audience of our food product are teenagers and young adults who are open to innovation in foods and the mixing of different food cultures. In our food product of Tang Yuan S’mores, we still stayed true to the combination of two different foods from different food cuisines – s’mores and Tang Yuans. Furthermore, the method of frying Tang Yuans that we ultimately decided on is also an innovative decision. The traditional and typical way of cooking the Tang Yuan in Chinese culture is boiling them in hot water, but in our food product, choosing the method of frying the Tang Yuan brings new experiences and tastes for the consumers. These new combinations and taste experiences in our food product still fit our target of audience of young people who are open to trying new changes in foods. Moreover, the overall taste of our food product is still pretty sweet, especially in the black sesame flavored and red bean paste flavored that already has a sweet flavor in the filling. Sweeter foods also are generally more popular among younger consumers. Hence, our food product still fits our targeted audience of teenagers and young adults.

 

• What would you do if you had more time or resource? 
• If we had more time to develop our food product, we would most likely want to be able to make samples to conduct a taste test with a larger surveying group. For example, in the consumer, in question 8 where we asked them if they wanted chocolate in the s’mores, the majority (12 out of 14 people) answered that they wanted chocolate. However, in the taste test that our group individually conducted in our session in the kitchen, we had agreed that for the black sesame and red bean paste flavored Tang Yuan S’mores, the chocolate flavor was too overpowering and it made the whole sample too sweet, and that was why chose to take out the chocolate in those two flavored s’mores. And because our surveying group did not actually taste the samples and was not aware of this possible scenario, it resulted in the results of the consumer survey to be not as identical as our taste test results. Therefore, if there was more time to spend on the project to further develop our food product, our group would have wanted to take the data collection further to be able to provide samples for people to taste and survey them on whether if they actually wanted chocolate in the s’mores after tasting the samples themselves.

 

How would you evaluate your contributions to the team? Anything you would like to work on in terms of teamwork? 

I think our team was pretty effective and efficient in collaborating as a team. Personally for myself, I think I was able to complete my own part pretty well, which was working on the taste test and recipe development. I think I was also able to push and get our session in the kitchen going at an early enough time so that we had sufficient time for the rest of the project in the later two weeks.

Something I think we already have done pretty well, but could have also improved was meeting together more often to check in with each others’ progress each class so that we were able to know clearly what stage everybody else was at. This would not only make the collaboration in between different parts easier, but also would help us easier reflect on the project as a whole in our blog posts.