Deploying customer 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” and how they can be avoided.

Presented below is the fourth common pitfall associated with this type of research – and how you can avoid it.

Fourth Common Pitfall: Ignoring key drivers

The main objective of most concept tests is to assess purchase intent. To save money and minimize respondent burden, many researchers stop there. However, this information is of limited value if you don’t know why intent is high or low. In fact, understanding a concept’s strengths and weaknesses is sometimes more useful than estimating overall interest.

Solution:  Include questions in the survey about concept characteristics. These may be broad or specific, and may be functional or emotional. Then use an appropriate analytical technique to determine the relative importance (impact on overall interest) of these characteristics.

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.