Jackie has been thinking about the underpinnings of texture for over 30 years – specifically what drives individuals to prefer different food textures. Through observations with adults and children and applying her high level quantitative and qualitative research, Jacqueline understood that food textures played an important part in product choices.
More than 10 years ago when Melissa was developing of a new food product for a CPG company, Jackie’s expertise was called in. During this work, they noticed that individuals’ acceptance or rejection of this new product depended on how they used the product in their mouths. This led to a 10-year quest to develop an understanding of these differences in behavior. Out of this work, the existence of four groups was identified.
While Jackie and Melissa were confident about the existence of the four groups and could accurately type individuals qualitatively, Jeltema felt that what was needed was a quick, reliable tool to type people so that the knowledge could expand beyond observation and classification. This became the creative tool known as JBMB™.
Melissa had worked on several approaches that could accurately identify and type individuals as to their MB group; but since this work was conducted largely on the side, it was only somewhat successful. After joining the U&I Group in 2011, she was able to put more concentrated effort into building an accurate typing tool. The typing tool JBMB™ (Jeltema/Beckley Mouth Behavior) uses pictures and pattern recognition to allow individuals to identify the Mouth Behavior that best represents them.