Concept Testing Market Research1

Concept Testing Market Research

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Concept Testing is a market research method used by Companies to evaluate concepts or ideas before it is launched in the market. A target audience is surveyed on the concepts to gauge the interest, acceptance, and willingness of the customers to engage with the concept (product, service, advertisement). 

The responses collected from the audience help the company make an informative decision before the launch. When a brand is preparing to launch a new product or redesign an old product, they conduct Concept Testing to identify the likes and dislikes of the target market. 

Market Research toolkit to start your market research surveys and studies.

Importance:

  • Concept testing allows the brand to see how well the product will perform if it is launched in the market. 
  • It helps gain insight into the improvements and changes which are needed. 
  • Concept testing helps identify how different segments of audiences prefer different features. 
  • The data collected from customers prevents the company from investing in concepts that may not be accepted by the customers. 
  • Concept testing prevents a company from investing in bad concepts based on assumptions. 

Concept Testing Methods

Concept Testing Market Research2

There are four most commonly used methods of Concept Testing. 

Monadic Concept Testing:

In monadic concept testing, a single concept is evaluated by the respondents. If there is more than one concept, the respondents are divided into multiple groups. Each group is then shown one concept to analyze. 

This means that each respondent only comes across one concept. This allows conducting an in-depth survey. Make sure to keep the survey short and follow up if required. 

Sequential Monadic Concept Testing:

In a sequential monadic test, the respondents are asked to evaluate each of the concepts. The respondents are divided into multiple groups and each group is shown the concepts in random sequence. The random sequence prevents the respondents from forming any biased opinions. 

Multiple concepts are evaluated with a small sample group which saves time and resources for the company. The risk is that the survey questionnaire may end up being long because multiple concepts are tested in one round. 

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Comparative Concept Testing:

For Comparative Concept Testing, respondents are asked to evaluate between multiple options to select the best Concept. The survey is simple, the brand asks which concept or idea is better and the winning concept is finalized for the launch. 

Proto-monadic Concept Testing:

It is a combination of comparative and monadic concept testing. The respondents are asked to select the best concept. Then they are asked questions to evaluate the selected concept. 

The comparative concept testing alone cannot provide the reason for the respondents’ preferred choice. The second evaluation using the monadic test helps provide the necessary reason. It helps gather information on the various aspects, features, or attributes of the preferred concept.

Application of Concept Testing in Market Research

Concept testing helps businesses identify the best and the bad ideas. It saves a company from launching a bad concept in the market and faces loss. Concept testing is thus a crucial step before any ad campaign, logo, product, service, etc. are launched.

These are some scenarios you can use in your Concept Testing. 

Identify Market: You need to have a good understanding of the market to target the right audience with the right concept. Concept Testing helps understand the reason why a different segment of audience likes different concepts. The knowledge of different demographic segments helps develop successful market strategies. 

Pricing: When you want to launch a new product or get an opinion on the prices of your products you can gather customer feedback. It can help you make decisions on how you should change the price or charge your products. 

Marketing message: With concept testing, you can identify what kind of marketing message resonates with your target audience. It helps you to understand how you can attract and influence your target customers to consider your brand for future business. 

Branding: You can also use concept testing for deciding logo, website design, color, etc. You can ask the respondent to select the effective idea and understand their reason for their choice. 

Best Practices for Concept Testing

For any subtle adjustment whether it is on pricing or features, conduct Concept Testing. By identifying the different aspects of the concept you can focus on the key features. Concept testing can provide a clear view about which concepts need improvement and which need to be dropped. 

Conduct concept testing for each change made in the product as per customer feedback. Collecting customer’s perspectives on the newly changed concept is the way to ensure that your data stays up-to-date. The ongoing process of concept testing helps you track all the latest trends about customer’s needs and wants. 

Learn from the previously collected data by comparing it to the new data. Previous data is filled with information that can help you improve new concepts for testing. You can look into past research to identify which method of testing works effectively. 

The introduction is an important part of the survey because it gives the audience the idea of what the purpose of the survey is. You need to make sure that the concept is described in simple language. The introduction should include the concept, benefits, and key differentiators of the product. 

The survey design for Concept Testing should be simple. The choice of answers should be easy to understand. Using questions like Likert Scales gives a coherent structure and a smooth flow to the survey. It is also easy to analyze the data collected from a Likert Scale.

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FAQs

Concept Testing in Market Research involves using surveys to evaluate the target audience’s acceptance and willingness to buy the new product concept. The new concept is tested before it is introduced in the market to gauge customer’s reaction to the features, price, and other important aspects. 

A Concept Statement in concept testing is the description of the concept that helps visualize the end product/ service. 

There are four basic methods a brand can conduct Concept Testing:

  • Monadic 
  • Sequential Monadic
  • Comparative
  • Proto-monadic

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