Testing concepts: Why behavior change and uniqueness are key

When testing concepts for a new product, a lot rides on whether your innovation leaves a mark. With lofty goals like propelling brand growth, attracting new customers, and reducing competitive threats, you want to make sure you have an understanding of where your innovation will land before it goes to market.

The most successful innovations are the ones that maximize growth by delivering valued products and services to consumers (just another reason why you test your concepts!).

However, simply meeting consumer needs is not enough to win in today’s highly competitive marketplace. You also need to offer distinctive products that will allow you to leapfrog the competition.

So how do you get there?

How can you tell if consumers are more likely to purchase your new product or innovation?

And which areas of measurement should you take a closer look at when testing concepts?

Here we’ll discuss why you should be taking a deeper look at behavior change and uniqueness when testing your concepts, and how we altered our own framework to highlight these specific areas of measurement.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, here’s a brief overview of behavior change and uniqueness, and why they are so important to your decision-making process.

Behavior change

Behavior change is the action you’re looking to drive among consumers. Do you want them to eat or drink your product? Visit your restaurant? Consider your brand? Understanding how likely consumers are to act helps you get a realistic view of in-market potential.

Uniqueness

To succeed, you want to stand out from the crowd. Uniqueness is the perception that you’re bringing something new to market or improving upon existing solutions to consumer’s problems. In today’s crowded market, brands need to solve consumer problems with a distinct and compelling offer.

Zappi’s innovation framework assesses concept potential on these two key dimensions:

1. How likely are consumers to act as intended? (behavior change)

2. How unique is your idea? (uniqueness)

To understand what’s driving overall performance, we diagnose whether the innovation satisfies a consumer desire, in a unique and differentiated way.

To get a deeper look into these two key areas of measurement, we introduced an analytical framework to Zappi Concept Test that provides a new layer of directional opinion of how to interpret your survey data and make the right decisions.

These updates include a new quadrant chart that plots behavior change against uniqueness. (Current users, rest assured! These updates do not affect previous charts or data).

As you can see below, our new quadrant chart provides you with an easily interpretable, high level overview of how your concepts performed, as well as recommendations of how to proceed further with your analysis based on these results – instead of a simple “go” or “no go” result.

Expert analysis provided on-platform for how to interpret the chart in line with the framework:

Your concept is an expression of how your innovation will appear in the market; it contains key information about your product or service which will attract and, ultimately, drive your target audience to act. Through your concept, you should articulate the benefits to your target audience that will entice them to buy, subscribe, use or otherwise act. And, describe how your offer is distinctive from others in the market.

Thor is a desirable concept, with your target audience showing a high likelihood to buy, subscribe, use or otherwise act on the concept. It also scores in line with the norm for uniqueness, which could be strengthened. Investigate concept differentiation to diagnose ways to breakthrough in the competitive environment.

Test 3 is an average concept, which scores in line with norms for behavior change and uniqueness. Investigate both concept desirability and concept differentiation to diagnose ways to improve.

In short, these platform additions offer a more accessible and easy-to-use framework that allows you to evaluate more detailed feedback and receive clearer direction on which concepts to back.

The easier it is for you to see whether your concepts are making (or missing) the mark, the easier it is for you to drive better business decisions.

You’ll get a much better understanding of how consumers are likely to act by diving deeper into behavior change and uniqueness. Which, at the end of the day, is what you’re really searching for.

To learn more about how Zappi helps leading brands carry out fast and effective concept testing for innovations, click here.