It can cost hundreds of thousands, to millions, of dollars to bring a new product to marketplace. Marketing research can be a critical tool in new product development. Concept testing is a fundamental part of this process.
Concept testing can use qualitative research at the front end, as part of the exploratory process, while developing the final concepts to be tested. At its core, concept testing is a quantitative exercise.
We typically use monadic methodologies to test the various ideas. A monadic test means that unique groups of respondents evaluate and provide diagnostics for each concept, in isolation. This prevents the introduction of “bias” in the respondent’s mind. At the end of each monadic cell, we may choose to show all tested concepts and give the respondent the opportunity to select which one the like best.
Keep in mind, it is often valuable to test you current concept/packaging/positioning as its own cell, in order to determine if the new ideas perform any better than what you already have. You can also include competitive concepts for similar comparison purposes.
Concept tests often focus on some of the following questions:
Here are some of the “concepts” typically tested: