Sensory evaluation of automotive fabrics: the contribution of categorization tasks and non verbal information to set-up a descriptive method of tactile properties

The works reported here show the selected approach used to build a powerful descriptive method of the touch of fabrics. First, naive consumers were asked to make classes of fabrics among 26 samples, based on their tactile similarities. MDS mapping showed a four-dimension perceptual space and the cluster analysis determined nine classes of typical touches, from which one exemplar was extracted for the following step. Second, internal experts from the textile domain were asked to describe the touch characteristics of these typical fabrics; they were also filmed while interviewed. Correspondence analysis and visioning of videos allowed us to identify the vocabulary and gestures used by experts for tactile description. Third, this information was used by the panel leader to drive the training sessions of the descriptive panel. The profile included nine terms and was applied to the analysis of 14 velvet-like fabrics. ANOVA and PCA results showed good panel performance and good discrimination of samples. Thus, the proposed complementary approach combining different tasks and different levels of expertise can be considered as a powerful methodology to successfully set-up accurate sensory profiling methods.