Marketing Research for Concept Development and Concept Testing are core service offers at Mindspot Research. We have learned over the years, that it’s helpful to utilize marketing research at the concept development stage. Employing exploratory research like online focus groups up-front to gather feedback on your concept ideas can jump start the branding or re-branding process. For example, reviewing mood boards, color options and positioning statements can help define ideas, brands, products, and priorities.
Once some ideas are fleshed out as stimulus, which could be logos, packaging, or revised positioning statements, a concept can be quantitatively tested. Most concept tests include at least two concepts and often several. If the brand is repositioning or updating, we can compare the current concept, packaging or positioning against the original as a benchmark.
Key metrics should be well thought out and clearly defined.
It’s important to know where you want to take your brand, so you know which attributes you want to ‘pop.’ If your goal is to have the brand be fashion-forward, innovative and appealing to Millennials, then you want to make sure when designing the concept test that you measure appeal, innovation, and attributes that indicate a ‘fashion-forward’ mindset.
The team at Mindspot prefer to test among a statistically reliable sample that represents the target market when it is feasible. Ideally, a sample size of 400 respondents is a good reliable view. However, this is where it can be a bit tricky and decisions will need to be considered on the best marketing research methodology for the Concept Test.
There are two main approaches to concept testing design:
Sequential monadic and monadic testing. Testing sequentially means that all of the respondents in the concept test will see all of your concepts. If you monadic test (non-sequential) it means that each respondent will see only one or only certain concepts. There are pros and cons to both. Sequential maximizes budgets and a tiebreaker can be included in case there are no measurable differences. Monadic is a bit of a ‘purist’ view and often marketing researchers consider it to be the ‘cleanest read.’
At Mindspot we have been in the business of reducing in-market risk and increasing in-market success for nearly two decades. If you’re looking for concept testing for your new ideas, advertising testing for your new campaign or exploratory research to understand what is possible…we’ve got you covered.
