Deploying surveys to test new concepts is often a key step in new product or service development. If not done right, it can produce useless or (even worse) misleading results.

Earlier we had made you aware of the dangers of “inadequate concept specification”, “missing or bad pricing”, “surveying the wrong population“, “ignoring key drivers“, “wrong methodology” and how they can be avoided. Presented below is the sixth common pitfall associated with this type of research – and how you can avoid it.

Sixth Common Pitfall: Inadequate sample sizes

Often when deploying surveys, cost considerations force many researchers to go with the smallest sample size that will provide a reasonable level of precision at the aggregate level. However, small samples often won’t support potentially important breakouts by key respondent characteristics. You may also want to limit some questions to certain subsamples, such as people with a minimum level of interest in the concept, and here again small base sizes can be problematic.

Solution:  Focus on the smallest subsample for which you want to be able to make statistically meaningful inferences, and let that drive your total sample size. You can sometimes justify the cost of a larger sample by adding questions which address other related business issues, or alternatively by including your concept test as part of another survey.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in journey mapping, path-to-purchase research, deploying customer intercepts and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, and mystery shopping. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. Contact us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.