You have got the optimal business growth strategy for your product. What is next?

Business growth in the consumer-packaged goods sector can take serval forms such as:

• Introducing a new product flavor.
• Launching a new product concept.
• Modifying the product formula to reduce cost – replace a supplier for getting the standards quality with a competitive price.

• Can we launch the product as it is, or does it need some modifications?
• Does the taste of the new product appeal to the customers?
• How do the customers assess the product attributes?
• What are the attributes that need to be improved? And what are performing well?
• How the attributes can be improved – improvement directions (e.g. increase/ decrease the amount of sugar)?
• What is the key attribute that drives consumer purchase decision?

Here marketing research comes to support through product testing research.

Key points for success

1. Define the objective of the testing.

The objective could be testing your product (sole product assessment) or benchmarking your product (comparing your product with the key competitor). This is the starting point as it drives your product testing research journey.

2. Define the target respondent of the research effectively.

There is no doubt that the ideal target respondent is the potential consumers of your product. This can be defined at different level: demographic (e.g. age, gender) and psychographics (e.g. usage frequency). Be realistic when defining the target respondent criteria especially when it comes to product usage. Otherwise finding the right respondent would be very hard (or too hard) to reach and costly.

3. Share your action standard (if you already have) or agree on the same in advance.

The action standard is Go or Not-to-Go criteria of product launch which need to be defined and agreed before starting the research. If you already have it, share it with the market research firm, otherwise let’s agree on the criteria in the proposal and designing stage with the research service provider.

4. Be realistic about number of product attributes to be measured and the amount of information areas in general.

This has direct impact on the respondent experience and interview length, which ultimately leads to poor quality and reliability of collected responses and results if the questionnaire tends to be lengthy. Simply because with lengthy testing interview, the respondent fatigue is expected.

5. Share the relevant sensory attributes of your product with the research provider.

Being an expert in your industry, providing list of relevant sensory attributes is an efficient way to get actionable research results.

6. Work closely with the marketing research team while translating the product attributes.

They are experts in research techniques and methodologies; however, you know your product attributes and meaning better.

7. Attend some of the data collection interviews.

It is an amazing opportunity to listen directly to the customers as they test and experience your product for the first time. It is most important to attend the fieldwork especially the first day (pilot and live interviews) to capture the pilot learning (how respondents experience the product and interact with the questionnaire and whole testing processes) and work with the research firm to act on the required changes accordingly (if any).

8. Identify and quantify the key purchase driver.

This helps in driving communication towards a unique selling point by focusing on the attribute influences the product purchase more. Make sure to get this as part of the product testing research report.

9. Make sure that penalty analysis is covered within the research deliverables.

This allows you to modify what really matters with guidelines of the improvement directions, so informed R&D decisions can be taken before finalizing the final product formula

10. Write effective research brief.

The effective research brief takes into considerations the above key success points, so please be clear and reflect the relevant points in the research briefing stage.

Conclusion

New product development cycle is a key stage in the business journey as it shapes the element of the marketing program and mix which is product, the first tangible thing the consumer sees and interacts with your brand.

Offering bad product experience or poor return of investment should be eliminated, product testing research helps the brand to do that through optimizing the product development decisions and drive the business to data-driven marketing and customer centric practices. Following the guidelines and key success point of product testing increases your return of investment on the overall new product development cycle.