Essay About Product Testing And Research Projects

Product Testing
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Based upon 30 years of marketing
research experience, spanning
thousands of research projects,
I am convinced that product testing
is the single most valuable marketing
research that most companies
ever do. The great value of product
testing is, perhaps, best illustrated
by some of its many uses. It can be
used to:
* Achieve product superiority over
competitive products.
* Continuously improve product
performance and customer
satisfaction (i.e., to maintain
product superiority, especially as
consumer tastes evolve over
time).
* Monitor the potential threat levels
posed by competitive products to
understand competitive strengths
and weaknesses.
* Cost-reduce product formulations
and/or processing methods, while
maintaining product superiority.
* Measure the effects of aging upon
product quality (shelf-life
studies).
* Implicitly measure the effects of
price, brand name, or packaging
upon perceived product performance/
quality.
* Provide guidance to research
and development in creating new
products or upgrading existing
products.
* Monitor product quality from
different factories, through
different channels of distribution,
and from year to year.
* Predict consumer acceptance of
new products.
Companies committed to rigorous
product testing and continuous
product improvement can, in
most instances, achieve product
superiority over their competitors.
Product superiority, in turn, helps
strengthen brand share, magnifies
the positive effects of all marketing
activities (advertising, promotion,
selling, etc.), and often allows the
superior product to command a
premium price relative to competitors.
Most companies, unfortunately,
do very little product testing.
Few companies really understand
the power of continuous product
improvement and product testing.
Even fewer companies know how
to do product testing the right way.
Fewer yet budget enough money
to support a serious product-testing
program. These shortcomings
in the majority of companies create
opportunities for the minority of
companies who are dedicated to
continuous product improvement.
How can companies realize optimal
value from product testing?
Product Testing Secrets
The secrets to truly accurate and
actionable product testing are several:
1. A systems approach. The
methods and procedures of
product testing should
constitute a standardized system,
so that every like product is
tested exactly the same way,
including identical product preparation,
age, packaging and
coding; identical questionnaires
(of course, parts of the questionnaire
must be adapted to different
product categories); identical
sampling plans, typically
employing blocking-screening
grids to ensure matched samples;
identical data preparation and
tabulation methods; and similar
analytical methods.
2. Normative data. As products
are tested over time, the goal is
to build normative databases, so
that successive product tests
become more meaningful and
valuable. The normative data,
or norms, continually improve a
companys ability to correctly
interpret product-testing scores,
and the norms help reveal
exactly how good, or how bad,
the test product is.
3. Same research company. Use