Coming up at Pangborn 2025
August 17th - 21st
Breakfast Workshop
The Joy Imperative: Designing Breakthrough Product Experiences
Unlock the art and science behind creating products that captivate, connect, and inspire. In a world where consumers are inundated with choices but starved for meaningful, joyful experiences, what makes a product truly stand out?
Join us for an energizing, hands-on workshop that will leave you inspired, informed, and equipped to design breakthrough product moments that linger in memory and drive loyalty.
As we navigate the Discovery Era, where curiosity and impulse dominate consumer behavior, you’ll learn evidence-based strategies to innovate boldly, spark excitement, and drive business growth. Through hands-on exercises and real-world examples, this session delivers actionable insights to help you design products that resonate deeply, inspire loyalty, and generate lasting impact.
Whether you’re a product innovator, sensory scientist, or marketing expert, this workshop will equip you to elevate your products from functional to unforgettable. Don’t miss your chance to transform your next idea into a breakthrough experience.
Breakfast included!
Wednesday, 20th August | 07:30am - 08:30am | Room 120AB (level 100)
Hosted by:
Caitlin McLean
Head of Qualitative Solutions
MMR Research
Taylor Schad
Senior Research Manager
MMR Research
Oral Presentations
An essential new paradigm for product development
An exploration into a new way of thinking about product development that goes deeper than immediate reactions. By tapping into five universal motivational segments, shaped by emotional reward, brand cues, packaging, and product experience, you’ll learn how to predict real-world consumer choices with greater confidence, across categories and contexts. This isn’t just about what people say they like. It’s about what truly motivates them to choose.
Monday, 18th August | 12:15pm - 12:30pm | Room 121AB (level 100)
Presented by:
Prof. David Thomson
Founder & Chairman
MMR Research
AI-driven sensory research: Bridging the gap in product experience research with Sensory Bot
Explore how we’re using a trained Sensory Bot™ to gain deeper, more human insights into product experience. Traditional product testing often falls short in capturing the full, lived experience of interacting with a product. Our Sensory Bot helps to close that gap by uncovering rich, sensory detail at scale. Using a toothpaste case study, we'll walk through how the Bot captures feedback across every stage of the product journey, from the packaging to the after-effects, highlighting not just what people experience, but how they describe it.
Tuesday, 19th August | 09:20am - 09:35am | Terrace Ballroom (level 400)
Presented by:
Caitlin McLean
Head of Qualitative Solutions
MMR Research
Are your new product ideas novel enough? Evaluating a scientific approach to enhancing novelty and diversity of new product & flavor ideas generated by AI-driven persona tools
Heineken partnered with MMR to explore the potential of AI Personas: dynamic, always-on chat interfaces built on the brand’s consumer flavor segmentation data. While AI personas already generate novel ideas, MMR built a new data science Agentic ideation pipeline for Heineken to enhance the outputs by leveraging and augmenting the data sources beyond the primary data. This session shares the results of an experiment validating the pipeline’s ability to generate high-calibre, novel product and flavor ideas with insights from both consumers and Heineken stakeholders.
Wednesday, 20th August | 11:00am - 11:15pm | Terrace Ballroom (level 400)
Presented by:
Alexandra Kuzmina
Innovation Director: Discovery
MMR Research
In collaboration with:
Posters
Understanding Alcohol Perception in a Non-Alcoholic Context Using a Long-Term Consumer Community
In collaboration with:
Decoding the Chemesthetic Sensations of Topical Pain-Relief Creams Using Descriptive Sensory Panel
In collaboration with:
Bridging Sensory Worlds: Aligning Global Panels for Enhanced Food Innovation
In collaboration with:
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Agile Sensory Evaluation: Leveraging the Women of Color Panel for Critical Skincare Insights
In collaboration with:
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Relating Sensory and Consumer Perceptions: A Study on Bitterness and Sweetness
In collaboration with:
Unveiling the Emotional Essence of Iconic Sensory Profiles in Savory Snacks
In collaboration with:
A Holistic Approach to Understanding Moms' Definition of a ‘Clean’ Infant Formula
In collaboration with:
Global Lexicon Harmonization for Sensory Evaluation of Nutritional Beverages
In collaboration with: