Social media in product development

With the increasing availability of the internet, a significant amount of data has been generated through social media. Consumer goods companies, scientists, and innovators are competing to find ways to leverage this information. Social media information is considered useful for marketers as they can directly track consumer responses to marketing campaigns, product performance, and the changes in consumer sentiment toward a brand. Many companies have also developed consumer engagement programs through social media. However, the utility of social media learning in product development seems indirect, or perhaps illusive. While many marketers are being challenged to demonstrate return on investment and many sensory and product research professionals are navigating different pathways to leverage social media information, this paper presents a fresh way of conducting the query to generate consumer and product relevant information. Coffee freshness was used as the research topic. The research here confirmed the validity of social media output. It also demonstrated the value of multi-language and cross-sectional queries. Lastly, best practices in social media research were discussed and recommendations were made regarding how to effectively include the social media tool in sensory and the product research toolbox. The authors challenge the sensory product research professionals to include social media data in their future consumer research framework. Failure to leverage social media may result in higher expenses in the cost of product development when compared to using only traditional consumer and product research tools. More importantly, researchers may miss insights that are impractical or difficult to obtain from traditional research tools. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.