Launching a new product is a very exciting time for a company. It is the beginning of new opportunity, larger growth, a time to diversify etc. Yet, if the process is not done correctly it can have dire consequences for a business. To avoid this type of catastrophe, concept testing can give a company the necessary information of how a product is going to be viewed by potential customers. It is a great way of gauging public demand for a product, before resources are devoted to the production process, while also being a relatively inexpensive process for a company to perform, compared to other forms of market research.
In short, concept testing uses surveys to evaluate customer’s opinions on a potential new product. Compared to other forms of research, concept testing focuses solely on the basic product idea. This means that the evaluation from customers are not going to be clouded by aspects such as packaging, brand awareness, or advertising campaigns. This means that feedback is unbiased and helps to show changes that need to be made to the product itself, and not other aspects surrounding it. This means that the foundations (the product itself) can be solid to build other necessary areas needed for a successful product launch.
The process which gathers this information has to be reliable too. As you don’t want your foundations to be based on the wrong information. In practical terms, this means that there needs to be a stringent process in place when developing the survey for concept testing. This means examining how people cognitively respond to the phrasing of questions, and making sure you have found the right quantity and diversity of people to take part in the survey. Alongside this, a company might want to make predictions and estimates about the quality of questions in the survey.
All of these steps can sound quite complicated and perhaps over the top. However, bringing a new product to a market can make a company financially vulnerable if it is not a success. Any actions that can be taken to help minimize the chances of this should be seized upon by a company. Therefore, being overly cautious to set up the right formatting for this concept testing is the first step a business can take to help protect itself from this vulnerability. Minimizing these types of risks helps the chance of any size business have a successful product launch.
