12 Minutes 
Get ready to revolutionize your product or creative development process with concept testing. It’s a key component of fine-tuning your ideas and elevating your marketing and advertising game to new heights. Read on to learn how concept testing can be your key to success when it’s time to launch your next project.
In this article:
- What is Concept Testing?
- Benefits of Concept Testing
- Pain Points of Concept Testing
- Types of Concept Testing
- Methodologies
- How Sago Solutions Can Help
- Lifecycle Management
- Final Thoughts
What Is Concept Testing?
Concept testing is a critical stage in any development process. It allows you to take a sneak peek into customers’ minds to gauge their reactions and assess the potential success of a new product, service, or idea. Concept tests occur before full product development and help you gain insights into customer preferences, market demand, possible pain points, and more.
Concept testing goes beyond product development and can enhance your advertising and messaging efforts. Exploring multiple concepts and ideas allows you to uncover the winning formula that resonates with your target audience. It’s the key that unlocks customers’ emotions and thoughts, allowing you to optimize your marketing strategies and significantly impact your target audience.
Benefits of Concept Testing
A concept test provides valuable advantages to businesses that aim to develop profitable and influential products. Companies participating in concept testing can obtain practical knowledge and make educated choices that positively impact their financial performance.
- Gain a better understanding of your target audience. By actively engaging with their audience, companies build stronger relationships, refine product offerings based on their preferences, and ultimately stand out from their competitors.
- Save on Costs and Maximize ROI. It is more efficient and cost-friendly for businesses to make changes during the testing stage as it saves valuable time and resources compared to making changes later during advanced development stages or after launching.
- Identify optimal features and positioning for a product. Concept testing unlocks valuable insights into what features consumers are truly excited about. Armed with this knowledge, brands can develop savvy strategies and position their product in ways that hit the bullseye with their target audience to maximize their purchase intent.
- Make confident, data-informed decisio According to a study by Source: McKinsey more than half of the time individuals spend making decisions is considered inefficient. Concept testing helps find the most robust option among choices or improve underperforming concepts, making it easier to make a decision.
Pain Points of Concept Testing
While we went through the different concept testing benefits, it is critical to recognize that it also comes with certain challenges:
- Price: Concept testing can often be costly due to the need to implement tasks such as participant recruitment, data analysis, and more. As a result, businesses may struggle with budget constraints when conducting concept testing effectively.
- Process: The task of simultaneously implementing multiple types of research may appear overwhelming, yet it’s essential. To ensure you choose the most optimal concept testing method, it’s crucial to thoughtfully analyze the research goals, the intended recipients of the study, and the accessible resources.
- Time: Concept testing can be time consuming, with various stages, such as designing research methodologies, recruiting participants, collecting/analyzing data, and generating reports. Speed to market is critical for businesses aiming to swiftly introduce a new product or idea and the competitive advantage can’t be lost due to lengthy research projects.
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Source: Whether you have a limited budget, little experience, or a tight timeline, Sago is here to support you every step of the way.
Types of Concept Testing
Testing concepts isn’t limited to products and includes many different types, including:
Source: Civic Science
Ads
Businesses should always gather insights on different ad ideas to determine which resonates most with the consumer. Fine-tuning ads through concept testing ensures optimal return on investment for your business’s marketing efforts.
Messaging
Conducting message testing significantly enhances the likelihood of producing marketing collateral that instantly resonates with customers. Businesses that prioritize this approach experience enhanced on-site conversion rates, increased lead volume, and improved subscription rates.
UI/UX (Usability Testing)
A thoughtfully crafted UI/UX has the potential to give businesses an edge over their competitors. Conducting a concept test during the early stages of development allows companies to refine product design, guaranteeing they capture market attention and deliver a superior user experience.
Product Development/Idea
Testing a product idea allows businesses to evaluate and validate whether it’s worth pursuing by measuring consumer interest and demand. With a little research, businesses can gain valuable insights into whether there is a genuine market for the product they’re proposing.
Source: ZipDo
Packaging
Product packaging directly reflects a brand’s creative identity, and it’s the first point of contact between a product and a consumer. Conducting a concept test plays a crucial role in allowing businesses to assess the attractiveness and effectiveness of their packaging designs among their intended audience. By doing so, companies ensure their packaging choices align with consumer preferences.
Solutions/Services
Concept testing is a valuable tool for businesses without physical products as well, as it allows them to assess the viability and appeal of their solutions or services in the market. By sharing their ideas and value propositions with potential customers, brands gather customer feedback on benefits, pricing, and overall appeal. This knowledge allows companies to refine their offerings, mitigate risks, and cater to customer needs.
Methodologies
Quantitative concept testing methods are particularly beneficial when working with a large sample size, as it provides numerical data that can be statistically analyzed. This approach is highly valuable for making decisions based on data, enabling rigorous comparisons, and accurately estimating market potential.
In the realm of concept testing and market research, a normative database serves as a valuable resource of data that offers comparative standards or benchmarks for different metrics or variables. By utilizing a normative database, businesses can easily assess how their product compares to existing offerings in the market.
On the other hand, qualitative market research also plays a pivotal role in the concept testing process by delving deep into the minds and emotions of consumers. Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on numerical data, qualitative research explores the needs that drive consumer behavior. Understanding the “why” behind their preferences gives us valuable insights to fine-tune our ideas and make them even better before putting them through the quantitative testing ringer.
When developing a new product or concept, comprehensive understanding is key to success. However, it is typical for limitations in budget or time to lead to a simplified approach when it comes to testing. The dilemma often arises between choosing either quantitative or qualitative research but opting for just one of these options can result in overlooking crucial aspects and potentially facing failure.
How Sago Solutions Can Help
Quantitative Methods
The process of carrying out quantitative research can sound complex, but that’s where Sago’s self-serve platform, Methodify, is extremely effective.
Whether you want to test one idea or several at a time, Methodify’s pre-built concept tests are your ticket to determining which of your concepts truly resonate with your target audience, regardless of where you are in the development process. With Methodify, speed is of the essence, and our monadic and sequential monadic tests deliver quick results, allowing you to test multiple concepts in various formats and stages of readiness. You can also build a custom method to meet your organization’s specific concept testing needs.
For those who prefer to utilize our expertise in survey design and data analysis, our quantitative experts are here to help.
Of course, research can’t even begin without the right participants. Sago makes it easy to connect with both a large and diverse pool of verified respondents. Through our extensive network of panels and recruitment methods, we strive to minimize bias and provide you with access to millions of national and global participants who have undergone thorough profiling.
Qualitative Methods
The rise of digital research tools has had a transformative impact on qualitative research. Notably, Sago’s QualBoard stands out as a user-friendly and efficient platform that enables businesses to conduct qualitative research in a timely and cost-effective manner. Group Discussions is one of QualBoard’s key features that can help you perform effective concept testing. This feature enables companies to gather participant insights on various aspects like packaging, price, and branding. By leveraging the asynchronous nature of the discussions, businesses can gain an in-depth understanding of consumer attitudes towards their product and make necessary adaptations accordingly.
By using innovative methods in market research, you can discover the underlying links between attention, arousal, and emotions, leading to more informed business choices. Sago Research Labs offers advanced qualitative solutions and neuromarketing tools to gain deeper insights into participants’ behavioral and emotional reactions. Our neuroscience research labs can assess a variety of stimuli, including websites, print media, packaging, mobile apps, and more.
These services and more are available in our in-person facilities around the globe.
Working in a facility is particularly helpful when doing any concept testing for a highly regulated product or industry, such as healthcare. Our healthcare experts offer a versatile approach to your research needs, whether that be efficient pulse checks or a comprehensive exploration of various topics.
A Hybrid Approach
If you want to get the best of both worlds by combining quant and qual methods in a timely way, QualLink allows you to accomplish this with ease. QualLink enables respondents to transition from a survey to the secure QualBoard platform, providing a more comprehensive understanding of their rating of concepts. This gives you the ability to optimize these concepts for further enhancement and development.
Our Sago solutions, both quantitative and qualitative, are designed to complement each other seamlessly. By utilizing respondent ID, you can explore longitudinal research and gain valuable consumer insights into how specific respondents perceive your concept over time.
Lifecycle Management
After the launch of a product or campaign, it is crucial to continually monitor and evaluate its performance to make necessary improvements and adaptations based on market demands. This ongoing assessment ensures the product, ad, or experience remains relevant and effective in meeting customer needs.
Partner with us and go deeper with your insights.
Tracking
By monitoring and evaluating shifts in consumer sentiment over time, you can conscientiously shape your business strategies to effectively respond and thrive in the dynamically evolving marketplace of today. Employing tracking methods further helps you stay one step ahead of emerging trends and cultivate innovative ideas. Our tracker options prioritize swiftness and efficiency, so you can take meaningful action and improve business outcomes.
Sago Strategy + Insight
At Sago Strategy + Insight, we dive deep to uncover the valuable insights that will captivate consumers and make your investment worthwhile. There is no fluff or unnecessary costs – just actionable results that deliver more bang for your buck. Our team of experts can help you identify the factors that drive consumer action, including purchasing behavior and preferences.
Final Thoughts
At Sago, we understand every idea is unique and that every development journey is different. We are committed to being your reliable partner at every stage, offering our expertise and tailored solutions to meet your specific needs.
If you are just starting on your idea development journey, we offer a range of services to help you gain a comprehensive understanding of your target market. Our quantitative solutions provide valuable data and insights, allowing you to assess the market potential and make informed decisions. Our Methodify surveys come with templated standard questions to simplify your quantitative concept testing. These templates can also be customized to you, providing you with insights specific to your brand’s needs.
Our qualitative solutions provide valuable insight for those seeking a deeper understanding of their audience. We help you explore your audience’s emotions, motivations, and experiences through online (or in-person) focus groups and interviews. This qualitative approach allows you to uncover hidden needs and desires, leading to more impactful and resonant ideas.
