Reading the Results

02/25/2017

Hello from Golden, Colorado! This past week, I have absolutely been loving my visit at Colorado School of Mines, and I'm thinking more and more that this is where I am going to end up in the coming fall. :)

But, until graduation, it's time to buckle down and finish this research paper! After analyzing 3 different blind consumption studies that I previously included in my methods assignment (cited below), I was able to draw a lot of connections between what I have written so far (I am a little ahead of schedule - I already had the first draft of my results section written at the end of last week) and what other researchers have written in my field.

Citations: 
1. Bakke, A., & Vickers, Z. (2007). “Consumer Liking of Refined and Whole Wheat Breads.”
Journal Of Food Science, 72(7), S473-S480.
(Bakke and Vickers conducted a blind consumption test to determine whether consumers preferred refined or wheat breads and whether these preferences aligned with their self identified preference between the two types of bread.)
2. di Monaco, R., Cavella, S., Torrieri, E., & Masi, P. (2007). “Consumer Acceptability of
Vegetable Soups.” Journal Of Sensory Studies, 22(1), 81-98.

(di Monaco et al. conducted a blind consumption test to determine whether information regarding the ingredients, packaging, or the farming system involved in soup production affected consumer soup preference)

3. Maison, D., Greenwald, A. G., & Bruin, R. H. (2004). “Predictive Validity of the Implicit

Association Test in Studies of Brands, Consumer Attitudes, and Behavior.” Journal Of Consumer Psychology (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 14(4), 405-415.

(Maison et al. conducted a blind consumption test to determine whether soft drink consumers could determine the difference between Coke and Pepsi and whether their ability to determine this difference was related to the strength of their preference for one beverage over the other).

Two Main Features of All Three Sections - Relating them to my Research:

1. All the sources begin their results sections by identifying or measuring the degree of difference between the blind consumption test product preferences and the participant self-identified product preferences. Maison et al. especially paralleled my research because there were two variables; instead of just determining whether or not consumers COULD tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi, the researchers aimed to connect this ability to preference strength between the beverages. Thus, in their results section, not only did they measure the degree of difference between blind consumption and self-identified preferences, but they plotted this against the strength of consumer preference for one beverage over the other. Similarly, I not only listed the differences between participant blind consumption and self-identified lip gloss preference, but plotted this against the degree to which the participant had been influenced by the natural product movement.

2. Then, the researchers draw conclusions based off of the results. For example, di Monaco et al. was able to determine that information regarding the ingredients within a soup affected consumer preference because consumers ranked organic soups higher than inorganic soups in their self-identified preferences than under blind consumption conditions. Also, Maison et al. concluded that, the stronger a participant's preference for one soft drink over the other, the more likely the participant was able to correctly identify Coke and Pepsi under blind consumption conditions (the plot created in the first part of the results section showed that participants were able to distinguish correctly between the beverages more often if their strength of preference was higher). Similarly, I made conclusions from my plot. Participants, no matter how influenced they were by the natural product movement, were likely to have self-identified brand preferences that were significantly misaligned with their blind consumption preferences, thus showing that makeup consumers' decisions are significantly swayed by branding, but not by whether the brand is natural or unnatural. 

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Analyzing the Results

02/19/2017

Hello everyone! (In case you are unfamiliar with my research, my abstract is at the top of the page in white.)

Another week has flown by, and, during that time, I have been occupied with finishing my results section and outlining my discussion section. Since I am a little bit ahead in the game, having finished data collection before last week's blog post, I will backtrack and talk about how I analyzed my data.

After collecting 50 participants for my lip gloss blind consumption test and exit survey, I calculated a mismatch score for each participant (how different their preferences were between the blind consumption test and their self-identified preferences in the exit survey). I plotted this against how influenced they were by the natural product movement (a score calculated from how participants answered multiple choice questions about their consumption habits in the exit survey). If my hypothesis that consumers highly influenced by the natural makeup movement are more likely to choose products based off of emotional perceptions between the brands as opposed to sensory distinctions between the products, then participants highly influenced by the natural product movement (scores closer to 20) would have higher mismatch scores than participants less influenced by the natural product movement.

However, after plotting the graph (see below) and seeing the lack of trend (I had an R-squared value of 0.01639, very far from 1, which would indicate a linear trend), I learned that all participants tended to have relatively high mismatch scores (4-8), regardless of whether or not they were influenced by the natural product movement. Thus, I was able to conclude that many makeup consumers make decisions based on emotional perceptions of brands and not actual sensed quality differences.

However, one interesting thing that I noticed was that the few participants with very high natural product movement influence scores had low mismatch scores (0-2), while those highly uninfluenced by the natural product movement (negative values) tended to have high mismatch scores. The conclusion I drew from this was that consumers very staunchly for natural products may actually prefer the sensory feel of them and be able to differentiate natural makeup from unnatural makeup, even under blind consumption conditions.

I also decided to look at the overall favorite makeup brand, the one that scored the highest in the blind consumption test, in order to see if consumers tended to favor natural products over the unnatural ones, which would indicate a higher quality in natural makeup. Surprisingly, the unnatural drugstore brand L'oreal won out, with bareMinerals (natural high-end) coming in second, Burt's Bees in third (natural drugstore), and MAC last (unnatural high-end). Therefore, since L'oreal won, it cannot be concluded that natural makeup is inherently preferred among makeup consumers for its sensory qualities.

As for my game plan for the rest of the week, I am meeting with Ms. Haag Tuesday morning to discuss the outline for my discussion, and Tuesday through Thursday afternoon I will try to bust out a first draft. Thursday afternoon through Sunday, I am going to Golden, Colorado to visit Colorado School of Mines, participate in prospective student events, and interview for a scholarship (fingers crossed)! When I have downtime, I will try to edit the discussion and the full paper.

Until next time, have a great week and happy analyzing your results! 

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Research Down! Now Let's Finish This Paper...

02/11/17

Thursday, February 9th, I officially collected all 50 participants I needed for my blind consumption test and entered in the results into my Google Sheet - woohoo! Other than that, I have been working on improving and seriously cutting down on my lit review and methods (after improvements, those two sections were up to around 3850 words 0.0 - but I have cut down to around 3400 and foresee myself getting a few hundred more out by tomorrow). I also wrote my abstract, which I have put at the top of my blog (the white paragraph) to help people new to my research understand what I was aiming to find and the results of my research.

Speaking of the results, let's look at what I ultimately found...

After I finished plotting each participant's natural product movement influence score with her mismatch score (measuring how different her blind consumption lip gloss brand preferences were from her self-identified brand preferences), I used excel to find the equation of the line of best fit and the R-squared value for the linear regression. The R-squared value turned out to be 0.01639, indicating that there is not even close to a linear relationship between participants' natural product movement influence and mismatch scores. The lack of relationship is also supported by the seemingly nonexistent trend visually represented by the scatter. Thus, I concluded that the natural product movement is by no means a sole or primary influence in forming consumer opinions and influencing consumer decision making in the makeup market, as participants more often than not had high mismatch scores (6 or 8) regardless of their natural product movement influence scores. Therefore, as indicated by the high mismatch scores across the board, the results suggest that makeup consumers make decisions predominantly based on their emotional perceptions of certain brands, as opposed to actual sensed quality differences between makeup products, but these emotional perceptions are by no means solely related to the natural product movement and are likely due to many other factors.

You are probably wondering which of the 4 lip gloss brands actually scored the highest or was the favorite among participants in the blind consumption test. Honestly, the rankings were all over the place and there was no one brand that clearly seemed to be ranked higher than the others. In order to analyze the rankings as a whole, I went through each participant's rankings in the blind consumption test for each brand. If the brand was ranked the participant's favorite, I gave the brand a +3; if the brand was the second favorite, a +2; and if the third favorite, a +1). After going through all the participants and brands, (*key drumroll*), I found that L'oreal (the UNNATURAL DRUGSTORE brand) won out with a score of 105, with bareMinerals (the natural high-end brand) in second place at 90, Burt's Bees (the natural drugstore brand) in third at 70, and MAC (the high-end unnatural brand) finishing last with a score of 64. Thus, it also cannot be concluded that natural makeup is inherently higher quality than unnatural makeup, as L'oreal was the overall favorite. Also interesting, high end makeup is not inherently higher quality than drugstore makeup, as L'oreal won over bareMinerals and MAC came in last place. 

Going forward this week, I am actually going to start writing my results section, which will include all of the above findings and also specifically analyze the participants with the very high and very low natural product influence scores. Interestingly enough, some of the participants with the highest natural product influence scores of 15-20 actually said that they preferred to purchase the unnatural makeup brands over the natural ones in their self-identified brand preferences. Thus, while participants may claim that they subscribe the natural product movement, they may not actually associate each brand with whether or not it uses natural or unnatural ingredients. I will delve more into this next week once I have looked more closely at a few specific examples. 

Anyways, thanks for reading through my blog this week! Let me know if you have any questions or advice. I hope you are all also enjoying your own research and time out of school. :)

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A Taste of Freedom

02/05/2017

We are officially out of school (unbelievable how time flies, right?)! The past few days, I have been enjoying getting more people to participate in my lip gloss blind consumption test and training for my new job at Starbucks. In case you haven't been following my research until this point, welcome to my blog! The goal of my research is to figure out more about consumer decisions between natural and unnatural makeup brands, specifically whether consumers choose between products primarily based off of differences they actually feel while consuming them or based off of societal influences pushing them to consume a certain type of product (e.g. health movements pushing consumers to purchase products made with all natural ingredients, as opposed to products containing unnatural ingredients).

Yesterday, I went to Skin Apeel Beauty Bar (a makeup store on Avenue of the Fountains in Fountain Hills) again and asked clients and customers if they wanted to participate in my lip gloss blind consumption test as they came through the store. I ended up getting 13 people, and now I have 34 of the 50 participants I need. I am going back again this upcoming Thursday, and there should be a lot of traffic going through the store that day, so I am confident that I will have all (or nearly all) my participants tested by the end of the week.

I have also inputted all my results into a Google Sheet I created. For each participant (assigned a number), it includes her blind consumption scores for each product, the 4 products listed from most favorite to least favorite (based on these blind consumption test scores), the 4 products listed from most favorite to least favorite (based on the exit survey, which asked participants to order the 4 lip gloss brands from "most favorite brand" to "least favorite brand"), a mismatch score (which indicates how "off" or different the blind consumption order of favorites differs from favorite brands list), and a natural product movement influence score (based off of the multiple choice questions in the exit survey meant to gauge how strongly the participant feels about consuming natural cosmetic products over products that contain unnatural ingredients).

Thus far, I am finding that almost all participants have similar mismatch scores regardless of how influenced they are by the natural product movement. I created a graph in excel plotting each participant's mismatch score (a number 0-8, with 8 indicating the most amount of difference between the blind consumption test and the participant's indicated preferences) with their natural product movement influence score (a number -20 to 20, with -20 being highly uninfluenced and 20 being highly influenced). My hypothesis was that participants highly influenced by the natural product movement would have more mismatches than those who had little influence. If this were correct, the graph would look more linear with a positive slope, indicating that the number of mismatches increased as the influence by the natural product movement increased. However, so far, it seems that the number of mismatches is relatively unrelated to natural product movement influence, as shown by the lack of trend in the scatter.

So, there you have my progress so far. Moving on to how I feel about being off on my own now with less guidance from Ms. Haag -- it would be a lie to say that I am completely confident in how I am analyzing my results and how I will write my results section. I am hoping that is one thing we can start to discuss in our meeting tomorrow so that I can have more direction on what will be most useful to include. Right now, the pitfalls I am most concerned with is unclearly presenting my data (for example, I have an uneasy feeling about that graph being hard to follow/interpret) and including too much/too little information for the sake of answering my question (e.g. should I add up/average all the participant blind consumption rankings for each lip gloss and include which one is most liked to determine which product was actually deemed the "highest quality"?).

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