Best practice spotlight: Research and evaluating concepts / pack changes

Background

We’re often asked by clients what ‘best practice’ is for concept evaluation or testing new pack designs when it comes to concept testing market research and insights.

It’s an important thing to get right – taking the wrong product to market in the wrong way isn’t just a costly exercise in terms of CapEx and the inevitable deletion, it can cost a brand equity, and damage relationships with customers (the retailer).

In over two decades of evaluating concepts, we’ve had plenty of conversations about the different ways to approach this – from the fast and cheap, to the ‘money is no object’.

Approaches

In order for market research to give the best insights and guidance, we tend to work backwards from ‘best practice’, noting that this has a direct inverse relationship with cost and possibility when it comes to concept testing market research!

• Taking a real product to market in a handful of representative trial stores (rather than full national roll-out) will give the best grip on how a concept will perform. This isn’t always possible, and can be incredibly costly.
• A step back from this can involve central location or limited single-trial stores, using eye-tracking glasses and accompanied shops. This is also costly, time consuming, and may involve physical product or mock-ups (and this can be problematic when a product still needs testing and approvals).
• Enter simulated research environments. This can involve virtual reality replication of shopping environments. At its most advanced, users strap on a headset (at a central location), physically walk aisles and use the virtual gloves to place items into their basket. This is an incredibly rich research approach, as we can evaluate gaze paths (through gaze trackers based into the headset), and simulate different retail environments at the click of a button. While fun and incredibly powerful, this is ultimately a costly approach.
• Where a virtual reality build isn’t feasible, we often build shelves to replicate retail environments. The product is ranged within its relevant competitive set, A/B test scenarios are setup, and we can evaluate the impact of new products or design / substrate changes on sales. With sophisticated choice modelling approaches, we can begin to deconstruct the impact of various changes (advertising support, pricing changes, substrate changes, design changes, etc.) and help inform promotional mechanics, above-the-line support or manage transitions.
• To simplify the above, we can control for variables. This may mean a simplified shelf build, taking pricing dynamics out of the equation. Importantly, our first task for respondents involves the shelf and measuring what they might buy (ideally in an A/B scenario to control for confounds). It’s important to do this shelf-task first before they get exposed to the concept itself – in the real world, no one is going to spend 3-4 minutes discussing a new product in extensive depth before getting to the point of sale. This sort of cold test (would they notice it / place it in the basket?) helps indicate what might happen with no above-the-line support, and careful research design can help unpack the impacts of some above-the-line support. After this shelf-exposure, we can then deep-dive into the concept itself in isolation and unpack the various componentry of response (first impressions, appeal, differentiation, purchase intent, usage occasions, flavour range, benefits, etc.).
• Where such an approach is less practicable (for instance where there are dozens of concepts to be screened, or exact ranging is to be confirmed), we’ll often test ‘control’ products alongside the new concepts. This provides a real world comparison datapoint to help compare results against known quantities.

In short

We have a number of different approaches to evaluating packaging and concept changes, and how best to conduct market research for concept testing.

New tools, techniques, and innovations make even shelf tasks far more accessible and feasible than before (now this can be included for projects at no impact to timeline or budget), opening up the possibilities.

If you’re wondering how best to evaluate potential changes to packaging, substrate, or introducing new concepts – reach out to Vibrant Insights. For a fraction of the CapEx fees, research is possible.

And, research can offer superior ROI in this instance. At best, it can help optimise a launch and more than pay for the research cost directly, at worst it avoids a costly mistake, an impacted customer relationship, and negative impacts on brand equity.