Praise: Lidls £3.99 perfume

texranger

Pollycat wrote: »

So twice as many as the one reported in the Daily Express.

Means that 95% of 150 people (142.5) preferred Lidl, 80% of 300 (240) prefered Chanel.

Or to put both together:
245 prefered Chanel and 187.5 preferred Lidl.

Not a particularly resounding success for Chanel against a £3.99 'rival'.

I wonder if the Daily Express trial and your trial were just asking people to spray, smell and choose or if the guinea pigs were asked to go away and come back and choose.

Years ago my friend used to wear Ysatis and it smelled lovely.
I tried some on in Gatwick duty free and though it smelled nice.
Luckily, I decided to have a wander round before buying.
15 minutes later, I was in the toilet vigourously washing it off because the smell was making me feel nauseous.

I still say - if you like it then buy it.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.

our test was a small table with 2 bottles 1 marked A and another marked B where people were asked to test both, some people choise to go away and then come back with what they thought

texranger

antrobus wrote: »

And personally I'd place more reliance on a blind test carried out by an "independent expert" rather than one carried out by a retailer who clearly has a vested interest in getting one particular result.

the tests i carry out are carefully done so that no one product is pushed more than another to get any particular result. the 2 girls i use are never told what perfumes they are testing so theycant push any pareticular brand. the customers testing the perfumes are given a card with A or B and they bring these to the main stall and are told which 1 they chose. they are never pushed to purchase anything

Duvarayi

texranger you said there is no way a £3.99 perfume cannot beat expensive perfumes,then you said you'll test it. Suprise suprise, the test you did comes back backing your prediction. Do you expect us to take your word for it. Your 2 girls have also gone to the moon? You won't see them but surely you can talk to them can't you?

Are the results not the other way around? Anyway I agree with Pollycat and antrobus.Independent expert blind test is the one I'll go with anytime not yours. Yours is not reliable as you took side long before you so called blind test.

texranger

Duvarayi wrote: »

texranger you said there is no way a £3.99 perfume cannot beat expensive perfumes,then you said you'll test it. Suprise suprise, the test you did comes back backing your prediction. Do you expect us to take your word for it. Your 2 girls have also gone to the moon? You won't see them but surely you can talk to them can't you?

Are the results not the other way around? Anyway I agree with Pollycat and antrobus.Independent expert blind test is the one I'll go with anytime not yours. Yours is not reliable as you took side long before you so called blind test.

yes i can call them, but i dont like calling my staff when they on holiday ( if you not noticed it is christmas) unlkess its an emergency.

many retailers will do blind tests (boots do them all the time, when they want to push the sales of overstocked perfume). i have done blind tests when a cheaper brand has been preferred rather than and expensive brand.

paddyrg

Actually the test conditions sound reasonably rigorous, double-blind is the right way to approach this. I don't imagine the newspaper trial will have been more rigorous or independent, it is a newspaper and wants headlines. 'People prefer the smell of expensive perfume to cheap one' isn't terribly sensational.

The place the trial was held will make all the difference - the sample group. If in Harrods, you'd expect more people au fait with expensive perfumes to discern the difference. In Lidl, you may find more discount perfume buyers. Or the choice of shopping centres could skew things. But double-blind is a pretty decent trial.

antrobus

paddyrg wrote: »

.... I don't imagine the newspaper trial will have been more rigorous or independent, it is a newspaper and wants headlines....

It wasn't a 'newspaper trial'. It was "carried out on a panel of 150 women by an independent expert. John Bailey, founder of the Perfumers Guild". I have no idea of whether Mr Bailey really is an 'expert' or not, but he has an impressive CV and since the Perfumers Guild is an "English niche perfumery" which appears to flog "bespoke fine fragrances", I'd guess that he doesn't make any money from selling either Lidl or Chanel perfumes, which qualifies him as "indpendent". Any kind of trial carried out by someone who has a vested financial result in getting one particular result ain't worth doodly squat.

RHemmings

texranger wrote: »

Hi

Well if was a good day for me.

Lidl did allow me to carry out a blind test, in fact the store manager gave me a box of 36 bottles at cost price of Suddenly Madame Glamour on sale or return just incase anyone wanted this as long as i did not sell it over £3.99.

80% of those who tested preferred Chanel Coco Mademoiselle
15% of those who tested preferred Suddenly Madame Glamour
5% of those tested could not decide which they preferred

out of the 36 bottles of Suddenly Madame Glamour i used just under 3 bottles in the test and sold 5 bottles.

Was this a double blinded test? Because if it wasn't, then your results mean nothing. Your results are very different from those given before, which needs explaining. Given that you already had negative preconceptions concerning the Lidl perfume, you would spoil any experiment you were involved in which wasn't fully double blinded.

RHemmings

paddyrg wrote: »

Actually the test conditions sound reasonably rigorous, double-blind is the right way to approach this. I don't imagine the newspaper trial will have been more rigorous or independent, it is a newspaper and wants headlines. 'People prefer the smell of expensive perfume to cheap one' isn't terribly sensational.

For it to be properly double blinded, then the women presenting the perfumes would have to not have known which was which, including not recognising the fragrances. Also, for each customer being given samples, which is A and which is B should be randomised, so that sometimes the Lidl is A and Chanel B, and vice versa. We need to know how many customers there were, and whether they would be like to recognise which is Chanel, and which is not. E.g. a randomised test on the same population as the experiment asking first if they can identify which of a number of perfumes is Chanel.

It is very rare for any small scale marketing survey to get anywhere near the degree of experimental robustness needed for the results to be reliable.

paddyrg

RHemmings wrote: »

For it to be properly double blinded, then the women presenting the perfumes would have to not have known which was which, including not recognising the fragrances. Also, for each customer being given samples, which is A and which is B should be randomised, so that sometimes the Lidl is A and Chanel B, and vice versa. We need to know how many customers there were, and whether they would be like to recognise which is Chanel, and which is not. E.g. a randomised test on the same population as the experiment asking first if they can identify which of a number of perfumes is Chanel.

It is very rare for any small scale marketing survey to get anywhere near the degree of experimental robustness needed for the results to be reliable.

Yes, randomised DB would have been better, but it is /reasonably/ rigorous I said. I gather from TR's post that the girls didn't know which was which bottle.

I also don't know what methodology the other expert used - he may be an expert perfumer, but may not have double-blinded, or may have drawn from a different population, etc.

I have no opinion which scent is *best*, because I haven't smelled them, and 'best' is entirely subjective anyway! Some people prefer one, some the other. I don't care either way. But considering the triviality of such a subjective test in the scheme of things, and how terribly badly many trials are conducted (even some pharma trials are weakly designed - badscience.net) this seems to have taken appropriate steps to be passably rigorous.

texranger

paddyrg wrote: »

Yes, randomised DB would have been better, but it is /reasonably/ rigorous I said. I gather from TR's post that the girls didn't know which was which bottle.

I also don't know what methodology the other expert used - he may be an expert perfumer, but may not have double-blinded, or may have drawn from a different population, etc.

I have no opinion which scent is *best*, because I haven't smelled them, and 'best' is entirely subjective anyway! Some people prefer one, some the other. I don't care either way. But considering the triviality of such a subjective test in the scheme of things, and how terribly badly many trials are conducted (even some pharma trials are weakly designed - badscience.net) this seems to have taken appropriate steps to be passably rigorous.

the girls were not made aware of which perfume was in which bottle as if the girls knew then they could of pushed either perfume which does not give a true test.

i know that sometimes boots do these so called test if they overstock on a perfume, but they use a very check rank perfume against the one they are trying to sell, so they get customers to purchase the good perfume