How Concept Testing Keeps Companies from Going Down the Road to (Product Launch) Perdition

If your customers are joining together in a chorus of “What is this $#!& that nobody asked for!?” — you know you’ve got a problem.

As with many issues in the world of CPG product launches, this one is far easier to prevent than to repair. Once you’ve dramatically (and publicly) missed the mark with a launch, your customers may feel anything from mild disbelief to full-on betrayal. They might think you no longer have their best interests at heart.

The truth is usually much more banal. You were just clueless. You thought people wanted something new and different when they didn’t. Or you tried to make your own version of another company’s popular product and it just didn’t work. You failed to do your due diligence with product concept testing.

What is concept testing, and why is it so important?

Concept testing is the process of getting feedback on an idea for a product (or product line extension) before you put serious time and energy into designing, producing, and promoting it. This essential market research technique evaluates the viability and appeal of your idea through surveys, focus groups, or interviews so that you can decide whether to move forward.

People who use social media regularly know that pretty much any major algorithmic change to a platform like Instagram or YouTube will anger a sizable portion of its users. Yet these strong feelings aren’t limited to the realm of digital products; they can occur when CPG products go in the “wrong” direction too. In fact, many CPG companies fail to do enough concept testing, particularly when it comes to nuanced, qualitative techniques. Some (in)famous CPG product launch failures include:

• Coca-Cola C2 (they didn’t make the benefits clear enough)
• Febreze Scentstories (it looked like a CD player so people thought that’s what it was; it was actually something totally different)
• Segway (it was kinda cool but it didn’t really solve a need)

One thing to note: Concept testing isn’t the same as usability testing. It’s about the general appeal and “fit” of a proposed new product or feature, not the nitty-gritty of how customers interact with a fully-fledged product (see table for a comparison).

When can you do concept testing?

Although concept testing research is generally thought of as an early-stage activity in the overall consumer product testing process, it’s actually something you should do at all stages. This is because you want to make sure you’re still on the right track — the path set by your target customers’ preferences — throughout. Later-stage concept testing can validate the findings from your initial exploration.

Here’s a quick summary of strategies for each step of the way:

1. Early-stage concept testing for idea generation and initial concept development. 

   As soon as the lightbulb goes off in your head, start finding out what other people think. Liquid fish oil that ACTUALLY tastes like crème brulée? If you can’t convince anyone that this is going to be good, it probably won’t sell (even if you really do make the taste work). Gauge whether there’s real demand for your idea before you dive into detailed design, prototyping, or manufacturing.

2. Middle-stage testing for concept refinement and creating a pre-prototype.

   This is for when you’ve refined the concept into something more tangible, such as a detailed product description or mock-up. Here, you need to validate and refine your idea based on more granular feedback regarding features and design elements. Figure out which elements of the concept should be improved before you go for more full-scale development or production.

3. Late-stage testing for final concept refinements before production.

   Once product development is well underway, you’ve got one last chance to hone your concept before you invest in full-scale production or a market launch with all the fanfare. This is an opportunity to validate that your marketing messages, packaging, and positioning align with consumer expectations. Find out if your product meets consumer expectations of the concept. Test consumer acceptance, pricing strategy, brand positioning, final product features, and purchase intent.

4. Concept testing for post-launch continuous improvement. 

   Even after your product has launched, concept testing remains valuable for measuring consumer reactions and identifying ways to make things better. Post-launch testing is useful for getting a sense of early adoption trends along with new feature and line extension ideas. Test consumer satisfaction, repeat purchase intention, brand perception, and competitive positioning.

Since concept testing market research is a continuous process, it helps to work with a product testing company that can get you feedback quickly. Highlight’s powerful software and concept testing platform uses a proprietary audience of committed testers, allowing brands to test with general population-reflective audiences or niche target consumer groups.

With Highlight’s fast turnaround, you can test early and often, giving your team confidence that you’re on the right track. Not having this feedback is like walking for 20 minutes in the wrong direction only to realize you’d been reading your phone GPS map upside-down.

How to get started with concept testing market research

The first step in concept testing is to pull together a testing audience that’s truly representative of your target customers based on their demographic and psychographic profile. Make sure to reach an optimal sample size for statistical significance. Keep in mind that you may need a larger sample if you’re planning to segment the audience. You can ask demographic screening questions during the survey to make segmentation easier in later stages.

Minimizing bias is VERY important in product testing research. The order of questions has been shown to strongly influence people’s choices, so for any questions where the answer choices are the concepts themselves, make sure to vary the choice order. (One thing to note here: For Likert questions, which begin with a statement and have possible responses ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree,” you DON’T want to vary the order.)

What are the standard concept testing methods?

Your very first concept testing efforts can be as informal as asking your friends and family what they think about your idea. But once you’re on the verge of putting some actual resources into fleshing out this idea, you’ll want to gather feedback in a methodological, data-driven way. Here are some of the methods that you can use to get real consumer insights.

• Comparison testing. This is a great way to test simple concepts side-by-side with an audience of your target customers. Each tester will see all the concepts simultaneously and evaluate them relative to one another. If your concepts are complex, however, comparison testing might not yield the nuanced feedback you’re looking for due to too much simultaneous stimulation.
• Monadic testing. Here’s where you get to have your testers really go in-depth with your concept. Your testers only see a single concept, and if you have more than one to test, then you’ll need to gather a whole new set of testers for each. This method avoids cognitive overload and allows you to ask more follow-up questions rather than relying on simpler, quantitative survey methods.
• Sequential monadic testing. This is similar to monadic testing in that each tester sees one concept at a time, but they’ll also see the others — in a sequence. There are two things to keep in mind with this one. First, you don’t want to make the survey too long and potentially cause non-response bias. Second, you want to avoid order bias by switching up the order in which testers see each concept.
• Protomonadic testing. Sequential monadic testing meets comparison testing in this method — essentially, you start out by showing everyone each concept by itself in a sequence (sequential monadic) and then putting all the concepts together for a final “pick a winner” evaluation at the end. This method has the same two caveats as sequential monadic — don’t let your test fall prey to non-response or order biases.
  
  

Common concept testing mistakes to avoid

Concept testing is all about getting good, unbiased data so that you have a good model of how your target customers will actually receive your product. Here are a few things that could potentially derail this process:

• Asking too few questions or making questions too vague.
• Inducing user fatigue by letting your surveys get too long (there’s a sweet spot between missing out on data with a super-short survey and overwhelming your testers with one that goes on forever).
• Biasing respondents by asking leading questions (something like “Don’t you think it’s great that our product lets you…”) or always showing concepts in the same order.  
• Doing concept testing too late in the game, when everybody’s already 100% invested in the idea and not willing to change course.

Additionally, some companies (or people in charge of a product line) make the ultimate faux pas of doing everything right but failing to take the results into account. Whether due to ego or inertia, this happens more often than it should. People get tempted to go with “their gut” or personal beliefs even when results point in another direction.

Audience selection is key

Gathering a solid, representative audience of concept testers isn’t easy! This is why you should look to a product testing company that can help you do this in a methodical, comprehensive way.

Highlight’s proprietary audience of highly committed product testers helps product researchers acquire high-quality data as quickly as they need it with 90% completion rates. As one of Highlight’s many concept testing examples, spirits company Country Luau made critical, data-driven decisions about its proposed packaging and flavor concepts thanks to testing that targeted country music listeners living in specific U.S. regions.

Let the data keep propelling you in the right direction

A concept test is like a compass — it points you back towards the path you should be on. When employed continuously throughout the product launch process, you get vital insights into your early-stage ideas, your almost-ready-for-launch product concept, and ways to expand your already-successful product line.

By designing unbiased surveys, employing tried-and-true concept testing methods, and selecting the right testing audience, you’ll be empowered to make strategic decisions rooted in authentic feedback from representative members of your target customer base.