New Product Development / Concept Testing
Product and concept testing are clearly very crucial to new product development as this is the stage that essentially ensures what products will meet the market or in the case of products that have already been introduced to the market- this is the process that will determine if it in fact qualifies to be part of a company’s official product line-up. Similar to food and beverage testing, product development testing and concept testing can be conducted through a variety of methods, be it at home, at a central location, in stores, or through quantitative online or IVR surveys. While products or concepts benefit from any sort of pre-testing, the final stages of development typically include more in-depth analysis where customers actually get to interact with the product itself, and often times undergo some sort of qualitative interviewing along with the interaction.
Product development often begins by testing a whole sort of concepts in order to assess product appeal or potential. Quantitative methods are common during this stage of development. Gaining useful insight through online / IVR surveys are one method while other helpful tools to sort through concepts include regression and structural modeling, both statistical techniques that help predict the concepts with the most market potential.
Perhaps the most valuable market research tool in new product development is testing the product itself. The most widely used techniques are:
- Monadic- Testing one product by itself, customer evaluates just that product. Creates use of normative data, stimulates real life, and provides the most accurate results as there’s no comparison between products or burn out from evaluating other products.
- Sequential-Monadic- Evaluating two products, but makes no comparison among them. Is introduced to one product, evaluates it, introduced to another product, and evaluates it. Often times the order of how each product is introduced is alternated to reduce rotational bias.
- Paired-comparison- Evaluate two products and make comparisons among the two
- Protomonadic- Consumer evaluates one product by itself. The consumer then is given a second product which they evaluate against the first. The order is rotated so that results can accurately be compared both monadically across products and comparatively.
Ultimately, concept sorts as well as product testing prove beneficial to the development of new products as both provide useful information in predicting purchase intent, value ratings, and overall appeal - and ultimately helps shape how the product could be marketed effectively.
