Great companies understand the importance of consumer and market insights. Enhancing capabilities like acquiring new techniques and technology for data collection and analysis are important to build insights and inform product development. Such introspective views could lead us to missing the point: inspiring people. A two-sided evolution is required. On one side, the insights team needs to upgrade capabilities and provide the best insights; on the other side the R&D team needs to engage with the consumer world, be inspired in their daily work and act upon the insights.
Nowadays it is becoming more and more difficult to develop new fragrances outdoing existing ones in terms of consumer acceptance. Developing testing methods able to identify opportunities for successful new fragrances appears as an essential challenge for the industry. This paper deals with the measurement of the newness of a fragrance in a two-dimensional way instead of the unique dimension usually considered. The authors consider both the mere perception of newness per se, and the comprehension of newness. Data analyses confirm the two-dimensionality of newness in the fragrance domain. This two-dimensionality in the newness construct is validated by a differential effect of the two dimensions on fragrance and product liking.