Choosing the Best Sugar-Free Spearmint Gum: Feasibility

Report

Prepared for
Those who love sugar-free gum
Prepared by
Kevin Rivera, Bianca Williams, Chris Morel, and Abisay Olivares, UNT
May 2015

Contents

Introduction ................................................................................ 4
Methodology............................................................................... 5
Results ......................................................................................... 7
Recommendation........................................................................ 8
Executive Summary..................................................................... 9

Introduction
Consumers typically buy gum out of convenience. Gum is an item that is usually a last minute
decision because of its location next to the register. However, not many people actually know
which gum has the best flavor for the best price. This is what the following feasibility report
tests. The report can be utilized by readers that are looking for gum that is reasonably priced, has
a great initial flavor, has a great overall flavor, and lasts for a long period of time. Spearmint is
the most common flavor of gum that most people buy because many spearmint gum flavors have
a similar taste.
Five different brands of sugar free spearmint were compared by their price per piece of gum and
through a blind taste test in order to determine which brand of gum was the best overall sugar
free spearmint gum. Each gum was unwrapped and placed on a paper with the labels of A-E.
Each person chewed each piece of gum for exactly one minute and the person rated the gum on a
scale of 1-10 in the following sections: Overall Strength of Flavor, Initial Taste, Taste after One
Minute, and Appearance. From these results after testing 13 people, the overall score of the gum
was computed from the average of the scores that each tester gave each piece of gum. This score
was divided by the cost of each piece of gum to compute the modified score. From this score we
ranked each brand in order of greatness. We recommend Gum C.

Methodology
To perform this experiment you need the following materials:
2 packs of gum for the following brands in their mint flavors: Eclipse, Orbit, Stride, Five,
Extra
Jar of cashews
Testing area
Stopwatch
7 tables each with a two person capacity
13 chairs
13 pencils
13 people who are not allergic to cashews
13 testing sheets as shown below
Simple calculator
Below are steps to perform this experiment:
1.
2.
3.
4.
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)

Go to your testing area

Take all gums out of their wrappers.
Sort the gums out by brand.
Label the following on 13 sheets of paper:
Eclipse as gum a.
Orbit as gum b.
Stride as gum c.
Five as gum d.
Extra as gum e.

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
a)

Use one gum from each type on each sheet of paper.

Set two chairs for every table.
Put one testing sheet for every chair.
Put one pencil for every chair.
Welcome the 13 people to their tables.
Ask the people to sit down.
Count off (3..2..1..go) so that when you say go the people initiate chewing of gum a.
Time the people using the stopwatch to chew the gum for one minute.
Tell the people at the end of the minute to stop chewing.
Tell the people to spit the gum out.
Tell the people to use their pencils
Tell the people to each chew 2-3 cashews from the jar of cashews.
Repeat steps 11-16 for gums b-e.
Thank the people for their cooperation.
Dismiss the people from the testing area.
Take the sum of each flavor of gum by doing the following:
Separate each of the 13 testing sheets.

b) Add all numbers together for gum a.

c) Repeat sub-step b with gums b-e.
21. Use the calculator divide the total for each type of gum by 13 to receive the mean. This will
be known as the quality point average.
22. Use the calculator to divide each type of gum in the following way: Package, which is one,
divided by the number of pieces of gum that came with the package. This number will be
known as cost per piece.

Use the calculator to divide the quality point average by the cost
per piece for each type of gum. This number tells you the quality
points that you get for its cost. This means that the higher the
number is, the more quality

Results
After we finished testing, we averaged the scores of each brand of gum and compared them to
one another. For our results, the average score represents the quality of the gum, the price
represents the price per piece, and the modified score shows which gum is best taking both the
quality and price into consideration. Based on the average scores, the highest quality gum is
Eclipse with an average score of 28 out of a possible 40. The cheapest gum was extra at 6.4 per
piece, and the most expensive was ellipse at 8.5 per piece. We saw that the most expensive
gum, also Eclipse, was favored. From personal experiences, we thought five would be the overall
favorite amongst our testers. However, we did see a strong correlation between the price of the
gum and the amount of quality points that each gum was awarded.

Brand of Gum

Average Score

Price per piece

Modified Score

Eclipse

28.00

8.5

329.40

Orbit

24.54

6.8

360.88

Stride

22.08

6.8

448.43

Five

23.15

8.5

272.35

Extra

26.85

6.4

419.50

Figure 1

With this experiment, we learned that you usually pay the most for the highest quality gum.
Although this experiment proves that when quality and price is taken into consideration, a
median can be met that satisfies all parties.

Recommendation
There were a total of five different gum brands that were tested. The winner of the five, was the
brand Stride also known as gum C. Stride offered one of the lowest prices and was one of the
best rated brands out of the five gums after the trials. When tested against other sugar free
spearmint gums, Stride appeared to have the most overall strength of flavor over a period of
time. It was the best quality gum, so we recommend gum C, known as Stride.

Executive Summary
We have investigated the feasibility of five different gum brands, the overall strength of the
flavor, the initial flavor, the flavor after a minute, and the appearance of the gum. We tested a
total of 13 individuals and had them taste and chew five different types of gum brands for about
a minute. They gave their opinions on each type and rated them on a ten-point scale: one being
the worst and ten being the best.

The five different brands were: Eclipse, Orbit, Stride, Five, and Extra.
They were labeled gum A-E, and were given to the individuals without the wrappers so they
would not be aware with what type of brand it was.

We recommend the gum brand Extra, as it is the cheapest and the lowest cost of the five.

Index
Eclipse, 5, 7, 9
Extra, 5, 7, 9
Five, 4, 5, 7, 9

gum, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Orbit, 5, 7, 9
Stride, 5, 7, 8, 9

10