Market Testing

Marketing 15/10/12

Concept Testing (Qualitative Methods)

We first focused on the development side: techniques to foster creativity, how to identify needs and develop solutions. Now we will get feedbacks mainly from potential customers => validation.

We will not care about product launch simply because product is not there.

Then we will pay attention to the mkt extension.

Here we will only test the description of the product (concept test) and not a product test, unless you have a prototype. We cannot make customers test the product. Concept testing is mainly an issue of qualitative testing. Final test is the market test with the final version of our product. These 3 tests are made before product launch.

Gather customers' response concerning my product before the product is realized. You may partially use the customers' feedback to reframe a part of your concept. When you make a concept test you can only rely on self-reported data (data is made up entirely by the respondent and the research cannot have control over the data) => very low reliability. You must identify things to reduce risks. You can use also focus groups interviews and conjoint analysis (quantitative method).

One example is a survey, but there are still too large questions and the potential customers to reach are very low. With survey or trial, the data you collect is reliable but should be representative otherwise you can end-up on non-launching the product. Find right way to compute questionnaire with open questions.

For the other 2 tests, we will have objective data, observations research and scan-data analysis.

Focus group key features: technique that looks at insight and not at the rules. What you don't get is the reason why people like/dislike my product. You are still seeking for the reason. You're still trying to identify the weaknesses of your idea, this is the type of info you can receive on this test. Technique that looks at the social and not at the individual. Help to have combined perspective as a consequence of interaction, things that you cannot have with a simple survey. Mechanism that makes all the potential issues emerging, discussing and interacting. The focus group should be homogeneous and not diverse (as the survey where you want to generalize) in order that your findings could be richer (i.e. you find that men and women have different expectations from your product you don't want their interaction but you must split the group in 2 focus groups). Flexible and not standardized, warm not hot (not for private or personal issues). Words and not numbers! => focus group is an empirical qualitative (not quantitative) method, way to gather qualitative data meanings words, like frequency of the patterns of data (i.e. you hear 60 times the word "safety").

The case of the new Coke

In 1985 Coca-Cola CEO thought that the company should create and innovate the product that had not been changed for almost 50 years. A lot of data they received from the focus groups were that people were scared that the new product would be too different from the traditional one. So they made a new package with the written "classic" next to