| New Product Development
Concept Testing
The Science of New Product Development
A well-designed new product concept testing system, overseen by experienced and knowledgeable researchers, can vastly improve a company’s ability to develop successful new products and services.
Having tested thousands of new product concepts over the past 5 decades, we have learned a few things about what works best. Here are some best practices to improve your new product concept testing.
Best Practices
- Concept Standards. The most important factor in concept testing is consistency in design and execution of the concepts. Standards are essential to guide the content, illustration, tone, and style of the concepts. Download a PDF copy of our Example Concept Standard.
- Sampling Strategy. The target market should be defined as category users for an established product category or as a random sample if the new product concept is totally new, or if the category is underdeveloped.
- Standard System. A standard system utilizing the same sampling methods, same questionnaire, same data collection, same coding and tabulation rules, and the like is essential.
- Ideation. Many new product development efforts fail because of too few concepts to test. Qualitative explorations, followed by ideation and brainstorming sessions, can greatly expand the number of viable new product concepts. (Decision Analyst Imaginators®).
- Screening Then Testing. If you have a large number of concepts (10 or more), screen these concepts with a comparative research design, then test the better concepts monadically. Monadic testing is recommended because it can be predictive of in-market success via volumetric sales forecasting.
- Competitive Benchmarks. The very best measuring sticks are concept tests for known competitive brands; such competitive benchmarks are vastly superior to general new product or category norms.
- Forecasting. A volumetric sales forecast is the ultimate measure of a new product concept’s potential value. New Product Sale Forecasting Article.
For more guidelines and best practices, please read Concept Testing (And The “Uniqueness” Paradox) by Jerry W. Thomas.
Download Our Free Example Concept Standard
Concept standards are essential. Standards help achieve consistency from concept to concept. Standards make the results from testing Concept A comparable to the results of testing Concept B.
Download a pdf of our example concept standard.
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Decision Analyst is a leading global marketing research and analytical consulting firm with over 45 years of experience in New Product Development and Concept Testing. Our staff has helped hundreds of companies improve their New Product Development Efforts.
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