Audience insights tool

Understand your buyer profile, including reasons for shopping the way they do and consumer usage behaviors.

Prioritize which groups to target (“Wellness Seekers” vs. “Convenience Buyers”) and tailor your strategies accordingly.

Humanize your audience and surface emotional drivers with exploratory qualitative research.

Use qualitative research to understand your audience’s emotional drivers

Pair quantitative metrics with deep exploratory qualitative research to learn about the various ways consumers interact with the category. Qualitative methodology brings you beyond the “what” to the “why” and “how” that reveals consumer attitudes, behaviors, emotional drivers and context. Humanize your audience targets with stories, verbatims, and archetypes–including optional video responses!

Design your test

Define your objectives, create your survey, and set parameters for your ideal testers.

We ship your products

We handle recruitment and distribution to get your products into the right homes.

See your data instantly

Gather feedback through our platform and transform data into actionable insights.

What type of consumer is most interested in my product idea?

Where can I find / engage with these consumers?

What motivates these types of consumers when it comes to choosing products in my category?

Where are the opportunities to win over these consumers? What are their unmet needs in this space?

How does product validation testing protect against costly recalls and brand damage? A: Product validation testing identifies safety, performance, and compliance risks early in development, reducing the likelihood of product recalls that erode brand trust. By combining functional testing (does the product work as intended?) and efficacy testing (does it deliver promised benefits?), Highlight ensures your product meets both technical and consumer expectations. Our vetted tester community delivers 98 to 99% reliable data compared to industry averages of 70%, so you can launch with confidence knowing your product is validated against real-world use.

What’s the fastest way to get reliable consumer insights without sacrificing quality? A: Most traditional validation studies take months, but Highlight delivers in-home usage testing (IHUT) insights in as little as three weeks. Consumers test products in their natural environments, giving authentic feedback you can trust. With a rigorous recruitment process including a 48% acceptance rate and red-herring screening, we maintain over 90% completion rates. That means you get high-quality validation data quickly, helping you accelerate decisions and reduce time to market without compromising on accuracy.

Can product validation testing reach niche or hard-to-find audiences? A: Yes. Highlight can recruit highly specific consumer segments, even audiences with a 3% or lower incidence rate that traditional market research struggles to access. Whether you need feedback from parents of children with food allergies, left-handed musicians, or specialised medical device users, our platform matches your product with the right testers. By validating products with niche audiences, you gain actionable insights into unique consumer needs and increase your chances of achieving true product-market fit.

What’s the difference between functional testing and efficacy testing? A: Functional testing confirms your product performs correctly under everyday conditions, focusing on usability, durability, and technical performance. Efficacy testing validates that your product delivers the promised outcomes and supports your claims, for example “removes 99% of pet hair”. Together, these methods ensure your marketing aligns with consumer reality. Highlight’s quality-first approach reduces junk responses to just 1 to 2%, giving you dependable product validation data you can act on.

How can product validation testing drive product improvements and innovation? A: Product validation is not just about risk reduction, it is also a tool for continuous improvement. Highlight enables diagnostic testing and co-creation studies, where consumers collaborate on refining product features and identifying unmet needs. Longitudinal research and sentiment analysis reveal how perceptions evolve, helping you spot innovation opportunities before competitors do. With reliable, high-quality feedback, you can transform consumer insights into market-ready innovations that strengthen your product portfolio.

Get the audience insights you need to create products they’ll love

Interested in becoming a product tester?

Discover audience insights that go beyond consumer demographics to attitudes, values, and more

Identify and understand how to engage the right consumer audiences for you

Measure category behaviors, trial, usage frequency and more

Use qualitative research to understand your audience’s emotional drivers

Power your product and marketing strategies with targeted profile analysis

How Freestyle Snacks used product validation testing to validate a new product concept

Getting started is simple

Design your test

We ship your products

See your data instantly

Answer the questions that power actionable audience insights

What type of consumer is most interested in my product idea?

Where can I find / engage with these consumers?

What motivates these types of consumers when it comes to choosing products in my category?

Where are the opportunities to win over these consumers? What are their unmet needs in this space?

See Highlight in action

The better you know your audience, the better you can build for them

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Common product validation testing questions

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