June 2025 | Concept Testing

Accelerating New Product Development:
Concept Testing Tips

Every product, day by day, is creeping toward obsolescence. The products and the companies who are frozen in the status quo are dying little by little every day. The only hope of business immortality lies in constant improvement and a constant search for the new and better. Product improvements and new products are pathways to the future, the lifeblood of strategic survival.

However, bringing a successful new product to market is daunting. New product concept testing helps improve the chances of success by identifying those ideas and illustrations that resonate with consumers and generate the greatest interest in trying the new product. Here are some things we have learned about new product concept testing over the years.

Research System

Concept testing works best as a research system. A research system involves standards and standardized processes and procedures, so that each new product concept is tested in exactly the same way as all other concepts. A “systems approach” permits comparisons to be made over time and across concepts, and normative standards can be derived.

Qualitative Review

When creating concepts it is important to make sure the concepts are fully and completely understood by consumers. Conducting depth interviews among target-market consumers helps achieve this goal and answers such questions as:

• Do the words, phrases, and illustrations communicate as intended?
• Is essential information missing?
• Does the concept convey any false messages or impressions?
• Does the visual imagery fit and reinforce the concept?
• Does the concept fit or go with the brand name?
• How can each concept be improved?

After this qualitative review and any final tweaks, the concepts are ready to test.

Concept Screening

In the early stages of new product development, it is typical to generate many new product ideas (25 to 50 or more). With so many concepts it becomes necessary to winnow them down to a manageable number. A recommended best practice is to test them in batches (a dependent or comparative research design) to save money. Each respondent would see and rate multiple concepts, and the results would help measure the relative appeal of the concepts. You would know that some concepts are better than others, but you would not know how good any of the concepts are. The batch approach, however, is an economical way of weeding out the weaker concepts.

Concept Testing

Survey-based concept testing is the final determinant of a new product’s chances of success. Monadic testing is the recommended method for most concept testing, as interaction effects and biases are avoided. In a monadic test, target market consumers view only one concept and complete a battery of questions and diagnostic ratings. This type of testing identifies a potentially successful new product idea early on and produces diagnostic information that can help strengthen the concept. If the survey is part of a Research System, the results from one test can be compared to results from other monadic tests. The monadic design allows the results to be used as critical inputs for simulation models to forecast trial and diffusion rates.

Sampling Strategy

If the product category is established and well-defined, the “category user” sampling method is recommended, but screen a random sample to find the category users. If the product establishes a new category or redefines the category, then use the random sample approach—but bump the sample size up to 400 or 500, so that you have at least 100 to 150 respondents likely to express interest in buying the new product. This provides the “whole market” overview of random sampling, but enough category users to make reasonably accurate volumetric sales projections.

The Questionnaire

A vital part of any concept testing system is a standardized questionnaire; that is, the questionnaire is identical from concept test to concept test. To tailor the questionnaire to the concept/product category, places can be created in the questionnaire where customized questions or ratings can be inserted. However, the core questions, and the order and wording of those questions, should be identical from test to test. Some of the main questions to ask:

Merit and Promise

Concept testing is widely used to evaluate new product ideas so that limited research and development resources (and limited marketing resources) can be focused on the new product concepts with the greatest probability of consumer acceptance. The companies that learn how to use systematic concept testing to identify new product ideas with merit and promise will win the competitive battle in the marketplace.

Jerry W. Thomas

CEO

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Bonnie Janzen

President

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Felicia Rogers

Corporate Executive Vice President

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