Product testing research is a proactive and essential process that contributes to the overall success and sustainability of a business.
Whether it be a new product or service or updating original versions, collecting feedback before launching can ensure it meets customer expectations, regulatory standards, and market demands.
In this blog post we'll go beyond a basic definition of product testing research, but also dive into its benefits, types, and steps to conducting a successful study.
Looking to conduct product testing research with a full-service market research company? Contact Drive Research today by filling out an online form or emailing [email protected].
What is Product Testing Research?
Product testing involves measuring an audience’s reaction to a product or service in development before it reaches the market.
In our experience, the audience should consist of your target audience at the least but should represent a sample of potential or current customers.
Once your respondents are gathered, it’s best to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data and analyze them to see what the feedback says about the product or service.
Why Is Product Testing So Important For Your Business?
It’s crucial to test products and services before they reach the market or during their development to ensure a successful launch.
Getting direct feedback from your target audience on your product can let you develop it further or fix any issues before it reaches shelves.
Not only can you judge things about the product itself but also factors about the product like price, packaging, and brand perception.
It’s just as important to keep a launch from failing by understanding pricing and perception. It’s also possible to test other product components separately to ensure that each part of the product works the best.
Here are some more common benefits of product testing:
- It ensures your products are high quality and trusted. It’s possible to fix any issues pre-launch with your product and also improve it.
- Reduce costs. When testing your product it’s best to look at pricing to find the best profit margin for your product.
- Understand your customers' needs. By product testing, you’ll get to know what parts of your product might need upkeep, need lifetime fixes, or need care before launching. It’s also possible to get to know the lifetime value of your product to your customers to see how long they might last before they come back.
Product testing has great benefits, it just depends on how well you can use it to your advantage when launching, revising, or testing a product for your customers.
The best way it’s used is in multiple cycles at each stage of product testing to get the best insights and get the most from your products.
Recommended Reading: The Importance of Ongoing Research Through Pre and Post-Product Development
Market Research Studies Best For Product Testing
It’s best to gather research on things that can be tested or changed with your customers' feedback.
Things such as price, product satisfaction, perceived value, and performance are all things that can be measured. Other things like brand perception, lifetime value, and status can also potentially be measured in product testing.
Luckily when it comes to market research for new product development, you are not short of options. Here are a few methodologies to consider.
Online Surveys
Surveys are best suited for product testing since they can ask different types of questions and get different types of feedback from customers (including qualitative and quantitative). For survey data, you’ll want to promote honest criticism with no bias so using filter questions ahead of time is a good idea as well.
In-Home Usage Tests (IHUTs)
In-home usage tests are one of the most popular ways to do product testing. This is where consumers can use the product in their environment which can change how they react to it.
It’s also possible to facilitate IHUTs online making it much easier to get higher quality data.
Watch our brief video for more information on in-home usage tests.
Focus Groups
Certain industries like consumer packaged goods, cosmetics, auto, and tech like to use focus groups for their product testing.
It can help give more context to their product and get specific feedback for the product that maybe the company is looking to exaggerate (like a physical component).
Qualitative feedback is just as important as quantitative and collecting both is always a great idea.
Choosing A Price For Your Product
Product testing and pricing research go hand in hand. It’s always best to do both where possible to find out how customers feel about the price.
Even with a fantastic product that customers have no issues with, you still need to know what they’re willing to pay for it.
That’s why choosing a price is another important part of the strategy whether it be through online pricing surveys or choice-based conjoint analysis.
The price should be competitive but not too high which is why including pricing research is critical. If your pricing is not flexible, you’ll want to know where your potential price point is before launching your product at a possible loss.
With product testing, a lot of context is assigned to the product which is perfect for pricing research since more context can signal the value of your product to potential customers.
By mixing the two objectives, you’ll more likely find valuable pricing research that is reliable.
How To Run a Great Product Testing Project
1. Choose A Product and Its Features To Test
For your product launch to be successful, it’s important to pick things that need to be measured or potentially changed. It’s not possible to test everything all at once, so coming up with key things to test is just as important.
Working with a product testing research company can help narrow down your objectives or separate them into different stages of research.
2. Determine Your Target Audience and Send Them a Survey
This should ideally include a target audience like current customers or potential customers. The audience should be aligned with the values of the company to get the best quality data.
Oftentimes this can be achieved through online panels or your customer email list.
Next, writing an engaging survey with quality questions that closely align with your goals and objectives. Our product testing research company recommends keeping survey questions to a minimum - no more than 15.
It is easy for respondents to become fatigued or disinterested in a long survey which impacts data quality significantly.
3. Analyze Your Data To Find Out What Needs To Change Or Be Fixed
This is where the data can be broken down into actionable things so it’s important to interpret it correctly. Once the data is analyzed, use the findings to correct issues properly, assign a new price point, or add any new features where possible.
Contact Our Product Testing Research Company
Drive Research is a full-service market research company with decades of experience conducting surveys, focus groups, IHUTs, and other research methodologies for product and package testing.
To learn more about our services, please contact us today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Austin Parker
Austin has an extensive background in SEO as he's been blogging since 16 years old back when the internet was in its infancy. As fitting, he holds a Bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.
Learn more about Austin, here.
