There once was a (fictional) company that tried to validate a new concept: a tasting box combining “wines of the world,” “cheeses of the world,” and “caviars of the world.” Servings would be miniscule but high-variety, and the set was intended to appeal to high-earning twenty- and thirty-somethings seeking to get better acquainted with luxury food and drink.
After spending months trying to recruit the target demographic, product concept validation data started trickling in. It indicated some level of interest, but the box fell short of expectations in a few ways. First, most young respondents didn’t care about caviar much; just wine and cheese would have been more appealing. Second, the subset of respondents who were curious about caviar mostly preferred sake pairings over wine (but the survey didn’t ask about this). Third, the proposed packaging featured SpongeBob SquarePants in a glaring attempt to reach Gen Z, and even the Gen Zers thought this was silly.
Unfortunately, it took so long to collect and process this information that the main stakeholder had already secured partnerships with wine, cheese, and caviar companies and finalized the packaging. (The packaging designer had her heart set on including SpongeBob and had already gotten a license from Nickelodeon.) It was “too late” to change anything. The product went to market and flopped.
This illustrates a common problem with new product concept validation: It can be difficult to get insights quickly enough. By the time your research concludes, your product launch team might just use it to validate choices they already made and ignore anything that doesn’t fit with the story they’ve already told themselves.
In this article, we’ll discuss strategies for getting the right insights quickly enough to pivot easily—well before the cost of pivoting becomes prohibitively high. But first, some basics.
What is product concept validation?
Product concept validation is the process of using consumer data to gauge purchase intent for a proposed new product before you’ve built a working prototype. It’s the stage that falls between simple idea validation and the point where you’ve got a real product to put in people’s hands.
See an example of product concept validation in this case study from Yolélé
Essentially, you want to know if there’s a problem that your product idea successfully solves, AND whether people would pay for that solution. For example, imagine some people who hate cooking and love protein-forward TV dinners. They have a favorite brand, but they’re worried about microplastics leaching from the container. If you propose a different type of container along with a collection of similarly protein-forward meals, will they switch to yours?
Concept testing in new product development encompasses a number of things, including feature prioritization (protein-forward, non-leaching container materials), pricing (can you sell your TV dinners at a premium?), and marketing claims (“2x the protein,” “NO microplastics!”). What it doesn’t include is usability testing or sensory testing, since there’s no product or prototype.
Product concept testing benefits go beyond simply getting feedback
When you do concept screening the right way, you won’t simply see which concepts score well. You’ll get a real understanding of which ones have a strong product-concept fit that will sell well. And, beyond this, you’ll have a golden opportunity to:
1. Generate some buzz around your new concept. Asking a large group of people what they think of a product idea can get them thinking about how they’d actually love to purchase a product like yours (even if they hadn’t considered it before).
2. Increase loyalty among your customer base. People love being asked what they think, and getting their feedback shows that you care about providing the best possible solution to their needs.
3. Convince more stakeholders that your idea is a good one. Investing resources into a new product concept can be risky, but the more data you have that validates the concept, the more people at your company will be willing to get onboard.
4. Pivot (if needed) at a much lower cost. The sooner you get data showing something won’t work, the sooner you can pivot to something more profitable, and the less money you will have spent on the low-performing idea.
So, you can get the information you need to build a consumer-centric product while also gearing up your customer base to buy said product—even before it launches. What’s not to love? Let’s dig into some techniques for concept testing in product development, so you can get some ideas of what might work best for you.
Product concept testing methods, from straightforward to sneaky
So, you’ve got the buy-in from key stakeholders at your company to take your product idea one step further. But how do companies conduct product concept testing? Here are a few tricks they have up their sleeve.
1. Surveys. These allow you to put a variety of new product concept testing questions to a large audience. When formulating your survey, consider whether you want to present a single concept to each group of respondents (monadic testing), show everyone each concept one by one (sequential testing), or have everyone evaluate concepts side-by-side (comparative testing).
2. In-depth interviews. It may be impractical to reach such a large audience with this method, but the opportunity to ask more follow-up questions can help you dig into people’s wants, needs, and motivations. When the sheer amount of open-ended response data starts to overwhelm you, remember that there are tools like Highlight’s AI suite to quickly make sense of it all.
3. Focus groups. There are a lot of downsides to focus groups, but they can also be a great way to have people bounce ideas off each other. Particularly when you’re presenting a concept that doesn’t have a fully-fledged product yet, focus groups can allow participants to better engage each other’s imagination.
4. In-home usage testing (IHUT). Even without a finished product, you can send testers a concept statement and possibly a very early-stage prototype to gauge interest. When people consider your concept individually and at their convenience, you’re likely to get more creative, detailed answers.
5. Fake door testing. This is the sneaky one, and it’s used fairly frequently in software products. A software company might include a button encouraging users to “try out” a new feature that doesn’t yet exist, and then see how many users click on it. You can do something similar for retail goods by putting out digital ads for a product that’s still in the works. Be careful with this method, though, since it can irritate people.
Getting a leg up on data analysis with technology
One of the toughest aspects of concept testing is the significant amount of qualitative data that it generates—particularly if you’re using IHUT. (And if you really want to understand the mind of the customer, IHUT is your best bet.) Technology can really save you from burnout here.
Through the Highlight platform, you can take advantage of the following concept testing technological tools to get better, faster insights from qualitative data:
1. Data visualizers. See your data as soon as respondents start submitting. The Explore tab plus your automated analytics like Scorecards, Crosstabs and Penalty Analysis clearly show winning concepts, frequently mentioned concerns, and more. Need to see the statistical significance of high-performing ideas or key metrics? Highlight’s Scorecards do this for you.
2. AI summaries. Open-ended analysis can be unwieldy, but that’s where all your rich qualitative data lives. Highlight AI generates summaries, groups responses based on topics, analyzes the sentiment of various responses, and includes a search bar to see if respondents are using key words or mentioning category competitor brands.
3. Ultra-niche targeting. For our fictional wine-cheese-caviar taster box, it took a while for the product development team to gather a group of high-earning Gen Zers who wanted to try more luxury food and drink. But what if you already had a large testing audience (like Highlight’s) waiting for you to tap into, and you could seamlessly select people with certain demographics and interests? Bottleneck averted.
Timely results that increase stakeholder confidence and fight internal bias
When you’re able to run a concept test with niche targeting and presentation-enhancing features make it easy to communicate results with stakeholders and get cross-team buy-in. Furthermore, if someone on your team is clinging to an idea that’s doomed to fail, you can show them data that will make them reconsider.
And it doesn’t have to take months. With the most likely bottlenecks out of the way, you can get decision-grade information in just a few weeks.