July 2003
Volume 16, Number 7
A Career in Sensory Evaluation and Consumer Research
Howard Schutz is an emeritus professor in the food science and technology department at the University of California, Davis. His research focused on consumer psychology, in the areas of consumer behavior, food product development, and consumer research methods. His PhD is from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
After a BA in Psychology from the University of Illinois, as an experimental and physiological PhD student at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (who was running out of my GI bill), I was motivated to take a job at the Quartermaster Food and Container Institute (QMF&CI) Acceptance Branch (1951) conducting research in taste and olfaction. The work evolved into research in the area of the measurement of food attitudes and launched me on a career in consumer psychology.
Since the Food Acceptance Branch had several social and experimental psychologists, I was able to build a very good team working relationship which was valuable as a guideline throughout my career. The other divisions of the QMF&CI were staffed by chemists, engineers and food technologists, so I had my first opportunity to blend my psychological knowledge with other disciplines.
After receiving my PhD, I was lured by the emerging field of human factors and moved on to Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio (1957), in the Systems Engineering Division working with other psychologists and engineers. The engineers were a bit leery of psychologists but at least willing to see what they might have to offer, especially in the area of visual displays and other topics where the human factor could play an important role. With my background in the food acceptance area, I wound up working on cooperative projects in the Biosciences Division and eventually moved to that area and developed a sensory evaluation facility. Here I interacted with chemists and biologists and contributed to grant writing in areas where the measurement of characteristics of food by people, including food acceptance, played a significant role.
After five years of the frustrating grant process, I was attracted to the idea of either an academic or industrial position. After interviewing at both UC Davis' Food Science and Technology Department and at Hunt Wesson Foods Research and Development Department, I decided the excitement (and money!) of industry was too attractive to pass up.
At Hunt-Wesson (1962) I held several positions, at first setting up a psychologically sophisticated sensory evaluation function, then as an Associate Director of Research and finally as a Manager of New Product Exploration and Screening. In these positions I had the opportunity of working with food technologists, engineers, marketing and marketing research people. Over time I was able to recruit other psychologists to work in the sensory lab and with them develop a number of innovative measurement techniques.
With a change in top management from a more quantitative to qualitative approach, it was clear that for me it was no longer an appropriate venue. The fork in my career road was either to look for another industry position or again consider the academic life. With contacts I had built up with UC Davis, it was possible to obtain a professorship in the Consumer Sciences Department (College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences) (1970) to build courses and a research program in consumer behavior. Thus, I began a 23-year tenure developing courses in consumer behavior, food product development, and consumer research methods. While contact with the psychology department was minimal, Iworked with a number of scientists from other disciplines including home economics, nutrition, textiles and clothing, food science, agricultural economics, sociology, and political science. I also had the opportunity to collaborate with an applied psychologist from the psychology department in connection with the activities of a Center for Consumer Research where we used both qualitative and quantitative methods to study a number of current consumer issues.
I took an early retirement in 1993, but continued in part-time positions at UC Davis, first as director of a Science and Society undergraduate teaching program and then in my current job as a special assistant to the dean of University Extension. In this latter position I have been responsible for assisting in the development of part-time masters degree programs and a Web-based certificate program in sensory evaluation. For the last 10 summers I have been working under contract to the consumer research group at the U.S. Army Natick R&D lab in Natick, MA. Ironically, this is the successor facility to my first job at the QMF&CI. Again I am working in happy concert with a group of psychologists.
