Flavour plays a key role in the market acceptance of all food and beverage products, and especially in the market acceptance of beer. This paper describes a program of research being undertaken by a major international brewer to develop an integrated set of mathematical flavour model describing consumer preferences for beer products and to create an associated decision support system so marketing and brewing personnel can make effective use of the models. The research is presently in progress so the paper reports on the work completed to date and outlines the direction that future work is expected to take. Four models are to be developed. The paper gives considerable detail about the first model as this model has been implemented and there is some experience with it.
Because of the qualitative nature of group discussions, they are often the subject of debate centering around two major issues. First to what extent are the results generalizable to the real world (external validity) and second what effect do certain internal phenomena such as moderator influence, treatment effect, sampling error, group interaction, etc., have on the output (internal validity). This presentation draws together from published literature a list of potential sources of bias which it is believed may interfere with internal and external validity of group discussions. These potential sources of bias were evaluated and rated (on a 5 point scale - slightly harmful to very harmful) by a panel of well known and respected group discussion moderators in Canada and the U.S.A. A consensus was reached concerning a measure of "the harmful effects" of forty-four sources of possible bias.