Get the next consumer trend right in time with early-stage concept testing

In a high-speed market place where new is always better, the constant demand for product innovation tightens the grip on market researchers’ budgets and resources. In this blog post we look into the value of quantitative consumer insights in the early stages of product innovation to get the next consumer trend right in time.

Consumer trends are popping up and out at a historically high rate, your budgets are being cut, and frequent re-organizations creates friction. Also, up to 95% product launches fail to become commercially viable (Harvard Business School), even though companies spend $73.4 billion on market research every year (Statista). It is no wonder if you feel out of breath!

As there is obviously not a lack of available data, what may the reason why so many product launches do not make it in the long run? It might be in what data is generated and at what point in the product innovation process: guiding the innovation process using consumer insights and a fail-fast approach identifies winners and losers before spending vast amount of resources on launching what consumers are already over or what may never have resonated with them in the first place.

This blog post touched upon:

• Getting the early stage of product innovation right with concept idea qualification and testing

• Benefits to resource spend and time-to-market of streamlining and standardizing the process

• How a standardized concept idea qualification and concept testing framework is built

• How Nestlé did it in their Global Ice Cream R&D Unit

‍‍

Getting the early stage of product innovation right with concept idea qualification and testing

There are two tests that can show what product ideas to invest in and which to discard. By ensuring early involvement of consumers, you can focus on the concepts likely to perform well in your consumer segments.

‍

First, kill your darlings fast with a concept idea qualification

A concept idea qualification is done very early on when the first concept ideas have materialized in an innovation process. It qualifies and selects the best performing concept ideas among a larger pool of ideas. At this stage, the concept ideas should only exist as a short concept description with a simple visual mockup of the product. It is a "kill your darlings" approach, so that only winning concepts are developed faster.

The key insights from a concept qualification should include:

• Ranking of concept ideas

• Concept ideas associations

• Purchase intent

• Perceived differentiation

‍

Next, test your qualified concepts before product development

The next step is to dig deeper on the concepts that survived the concept qualification. This is done through a concept test where ideas are once again tested with consumers. The concepts should all have been developed a bit further than in the first round and they are now tested on a range of KPIs. The point is to identify the concept's strengths and weaknesses across these KPIs such as likability, purchase intent, differentiation, and brand coherence to ultimately decide whether the concept is good enough to continue into product development.

Whether you are looking to test a single concept through monadic testing or multiple concepts through sequential monadic testing, you will be able to identify the most suitable concept for the given audience and identify weaknesses and strongholds. The key insights from a concept test should include:

• Concept KPI ratings

• Overall concept score and main factors

• Concept strengths & weaknesses

• Concept selection

• Concept attribute evaluation

‍

Benefits to resource spend and time-to-market of streamlining and standardizing the process

The really big win is to build a framework for this that can be used over and over again. Building a streamlined concept testing framework for your brand helps you reach that agility and minimize risk. In short, you get:

• A standardized framework

  Standardized way of working tailored to your brand ensuring coherence with internal workflows

• A democratized framework enabling your team to be self-helped

  A streamlined way-of-working enables more team members to get insights without assistance from internal market researchers. This saves you resources as junior market researchers or even category managers can run the process themselves. Process agreements can ensure level of use to stay on budget.

• Shorten time-to-market

  With a smartly built framework, consumer insights accelerates the product innovation and you get a higher chance of succeeding commercially with your new product launches.

How a standardized concept idea qualification and concept testing framework is built

The objective is to establish a streamlined process for testing and qualifying early-stage concept ideas that ensures the necessary insights and is user-friendly in both conducting the research and concluded on the research results. Building the framework includes:
‍

• Custom questionnaire templates

  Individual custom questionnaire templates are developed for the concept idea qualification and concept test respectively. They should match your brand and they KPIs you need to evaluate a concept’s viability from. That means your team only need to add concept descriptions, prices, and visuals from round to round and the format for these are defined in an easy-to-understand manner making the framework accessible even for team members that are not senior market researchers.

• Custom reporting templates

  For each round, reporting templates tailored to your process and brand get you from raw data to actionable insights quick and easy. A concept qualification reporting typically includes an overview of scores with a presentation concluding on the best performing concepts (e.g., measured by purchase intent and brand associations). For concept testing the concept is scored based on concept likability, purchase intent, differentiation evaluation, and associations, etc. The reporting is streamlined to enable all team members to easily digest and conclude what next steps need to be taken.