To Increase Product Success and Minimize Risk, Don’t Skip Concept Testing

Measure twice, cut once. It’s a well-known saying. And it’s accurate – especially in product development and merchandising. This is where the success of a product is critically linked to concept testing to validate your market opportunity and mitigate the risk of a failed product launch and costly mark-downs.

There can be a lot at stake by forgoing this step. Going to market with a product that hasn’t been validated and refined in this early phase can mean sunk time or costly backtracking on already compressed calendars. It can also lead to even bigger problems after launch.

Identifying and qualifying market opportunities, validating product concepts, and refining those concepts with valuable input from your target customers checks off a lot of important boxes on the front-end of your development and merchandising processes. This allows you and your teams to move forward with key directional information and confidence.

The Value of Concept Testing

The high-level objective of your concept testing process is to enable you to move into product development and product testing with the confidence that comes from knowing your target market is already on board. Below are some of the most common ways you can apply concept testing to move into product development with confidence:

  • Validate a market opportunity
  • Understand your target customers’ preferences and key drivers of interest
  • Pass or fail product concepts early and focus on your best opportunities
  • Generate rankings for multiple design directions and numerous features and attributes
  • Develop optimized product positioning, product naming, and pricing

Tip: When using a product testing platform with an integrated tester community, your brand can use the concept testing stage to identify ideal testers for the product testing stage. Learn more about Connecting Concept Testing and Product Testing.

The Value of a Concept Tester Community

Your target customers have the insights and feedback you need to take your product concept out of your meetings and into the market with a higher chance of success.

If your teams have only been ideating internally, it’s time to start including your customers. When that group is selected using extensive bio-attributes, activity details, and professional information, you can generate valuable insights from testers that you can trust.

In the past, the process of identifying relevant testers across your market (who aren’t just your friends, family, and coworkers) has been a challenge. In fact, it has been a barrier for some brands. Now, platforms designed to identify and engage the right target customers quickly and engage them efficiently are at your fingertips. Now, it’s easier than ever to infuse your product development with the voice of the customer.

What Goes into Successful Concept Testing?

While the purpose behind conducting concept testing should be clear, the execution is really the critical piece.

Your concept testing solution should be purpose-built for this function. This makes it easy to send out concept testing surveys and gather customer feedback. You can then apply that data and information across your organization to inform the remainder of your product development process.

In our next post, we’ll be diving deeper into the key elements of successful concept testing and the right tools and techniques that can help take your products from viable to exceptional.

Advance your concept testing strategy – or get one off the ground! Contact us to learn about our concept testing solution with the features you need to move seamlessly into product development and merchandising.