This study aims to determine a preferred dining style for the next generation by using the helpful toolkit called “The Seven Tools for New Product Planning”, suggested by N. Kanda etc. Just as our diet has changed year-by-year, the attitudes and behavior of homemakers in respect of diet 10 years from now are not expected to mirror those of present-day homemakers. In order to introduce new products and services as quickly as possible to potential new markets, it is necessary to understand the dietary perceptions of today's younger generation, and propose new dining styles that include new concepts for products and services according to the needs of them.
This study was implemented through the following procedures: first, group interviews to understand potential dietary preferences; next, a questionnaire survey to verify dining style preferences for the next generation; third, positioning analysis to determine the correlation between various eating patterns and the eating styles that consumers prefer; fourth, creation of unique ideas by the conceptualization method for new products to support the preferred dining style; fifth, screening of the ideas, using the idea screening method; finally, conjoint analysis used to optimize the product concepts.
Then, two kinds of dining style were proposed, “pleasurable dining”and “stylish dining.”Refrigerator, tabletop cooker, kotatsu and lighting fixtures improved by younger generation were simulated to be promising.

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We investigated how visual volume and height of food held on a plate affect our impression of the food, in particular, appetite. In viewing pictures of plates in which the volume (amount) and height ofthe food varied systematically, participants rated their impressions for the food in different dimensions, such as appetite, preference, attraction, and impact. In two experiments, factor analysis extracted two factors; the first factor is related to preference and appetite of the food while the second factor is related to the amount and impact. ANOVA on the factor scores showed that the first factor is modulated by the height if the volume of the food was fixed, and that proper combinations of food height and volume can effectively stimulate their appetite. These findings suggest that manipulating height and volume of the food would be an effective method to sharpen people's appetite and make the food attractive in our visual communications in restaurant showcases and pictures on web sites, as well as real food itself.

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Eating Quality is comprised of several different factors; chemical (taste and flavor) and physical (temperature, appearance, and sound) actualized properties of the food, as well as latent influences such as the past experience and the mental and physical state of the consumer. In the field of Kansei engineering, the relationship between several evaluation factors is called Kansei interaction. The purpose of this study is to clarify the Kansei interaction between flavor and texture in food products. The control sample is plain sausage with no added spices. Four samples are flavored with different seed spices (Flavors A, B, C, and D). The eating quality of the sausages is rated using nine evaluation terms. After eating a sausage set, the panel assigns positive points if they rate the flavored sausage more highly in each of the eating quality categories. The two analytical methods used in this study are 95% critical intervals of means and graphical modeling, a type of causal analysis. There are no significant differences noted for crunchiness and deliciousness between any of the variables. It is considered that the interpretation of the texture of a food may change based on a particular flavoring, and that this ultimately determines the desirability or deliciousness of a product.

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The establishment of a product brand image has the potential to become the obstruction of a new product development. It is necessary to pay attention to an adjacent image which is different from the product brand one, and to incorporate this into the image of a new product. “IF-THEN type Kansei evaluation”by the onomatopoeia and the exclamation in Japanese is executed. The samples are three lactic acid beverages. 11 kinds of psychological states are set in IF, as question items. 29 kinds of answer items are set in THEN. The characteristic of each beverage has become clear from the results of χ² test and dual scaling. The importance of developing a new product without destroying the product brand image is discussed.

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As standards of living increase, product development has increasingly addressed limited consumers' individual preferences. Furthermore, health concerns are rising apace. Healthy and comfortable living is a major life goal. This paper presents design and implementation of a recipe search system as a Web application. This report relates a new individual preference model for food selection, an evaluation technique, Chinese medicinal food principles, and four-group point theory. The resultant Web application is verified as useful for selecting preferred recipes from numerous data sets. It can support healthy lifestyles through the intake of calories and nutrients daily and can be reviewed quickly. Such an online Web service that can satisfy user preferences and play a role in health support will facilitate users' healthy comfortable life.

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The purpose of this research is to analyze impressions of products based on the KANSEI of subjects exposedto product images. To fulfill this purpose, tests were conducted with commercially available pickles. Yearly shipments of manufactured pickles totaled as high as 550 billion yen in the past. However, annual shipments have fallen to less than 500 billion yen in recent years, and this reflects the extent to which hard times have befallen the industry. Thus, one of the major problems facing the pickle industry is how to expand sales of pickles to consumers. Accordingly, consumer tastes in products were investigated by gathering data through a survey, and parameters in line with important headings relating to the products above were ascertained. In this research, the parameters broadly came under the heading of “appearance of contents”of products, and samples corresponding to various shapes were prepared. With these samples, we conducted evaluation tests and analyzed the results using a statistical method. In this paper we shall attempt to gauge the reactions of the market to products created using new development methods.

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In order to develop new lunch jars, in this study, ‘ Seven Tools for New Product Planning ’ was used to clarify the direction for lunch jars and optimized concepts by using the group interview to raise hypotheses of lunch jars. To verify those hypotheses obtained from interview survey, questionnaire survey was carried out. Moreover, in order to clarify the condition of lunch jars, positioning analysis was conducted using the data obtained from the questionnaire survey, and the planning directions for new lunch jars were clarified. Depending on this planning direction, 702 original ideas were generated, and then in order to select more promising ones, weighting evaluation was used. Finally, it was optimized to make sure product concept by conjoint analysis. And the concepts of new lunch jars that had strong possibility of great success were proposed by this research.

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