Launching a new product or service can be an exciting venture for an organization. Newness breeds excitement — unless that excitement isn’t matched by the market you hope to serve. That’s why it’s a good idea to do your due diligence and conduct market research before committing to an expansive (and expensive) rollout.
One of the most effective ways to do this is to craft concept-testing survey questions that will help your company predict the market response to a new product or service. Polling customers through concept surveys minimizes the risks associated with innovation and change. If you want to change the design or experience for a popular product, you don’t have to lose loyal, longtime customers who preferred the original.
But you might not know exactly how to get the answers you need from your valued customers. To help with that, here’s a list of some of the most essential concept-testing survey questions.
What is a concept-testing survey?
If a company is running a concept-testing survey, it simply means it’s testing the idea behind a new product or service before launching it for the general public. The idea behind concept testing is that, no matter how informed a company is about their consumers, a product is only successful if the customer says it is. What makes sense on paper may fall flat when examined by the end user, so concept testing can give you the feedback you need to refine your offering.
Concept testing surveys can also be useful to
- Enter into new markets
- Forecast future sales of a new product
- Benchmark price points
- Decide between different product concepts or branding
By the end of the test, your customers’ responses should show you the level of purchase intent you can expect from your customers at launch. Then, you can decide for yourself if the new product or service should go to market.
What are some essential concept-testing survey questions?
Include these four questions in each concept survey you conduct. Pair these with questions that are more specific to your product, and you’ll have an excellent idea of how your market will react to a launch.
1. How likely are you to purchase this product or service?
If you were setting up a concept-testing survey and could only choose one question to ask, this would be it. While other questions will help you refine your results, provide you with more granular feedback, and allow you to make minor changes to your launch, product purchase intent is the most important metric when determining if consumers will be interested in a product or service.
2. Is this product or service worth the proposed price?
A good product that costs more than it’s worth can just as easily miss sales goals as a poorly made product. You need to understand just how much people are willing to pay before you can be sure your product will sell. This concept-testing survey question will help you determine the price range you need to set at launch to successfully draw in customers.
3. What is one thing you like and one thing you dislike about this product?
Encouraging each respondent to pick both a positive and negative aspect of your product will give you the insight you need to make changes down the line. If respondents with high purchase intent all list the same positive, for example, it’s a good idea to emphasize that feature in your marketing. Likewise, if respondents with low purchase intent list the same negative, you might need to go back to the drawing board to address that flaw before moving forward.
4. Would you recommend this product to a friend?
People are social creatures, and their reputations are important to them. When you ask this question, you encourage your respondents to think about how people closest to them would respond to their recommendation. If a customer has high purchase intent and would recommend the product to others, you’ve likely got a winner.
How can you set up a concept-testing survey?
If you want to take advantage of the insight you can glean from a concept-testing survey, you need to make sure it’s as accessible and easy to use as possible. (It can also be helpful to offer prizes or coupons for customers who decide to give feedback.)
A platform like online form builder Jotform and its available resources can help ensure your product concept testing is a success. And if you want to avoid the hassle of designing your own survey from scratch — and instead you’d like to focus your energy on writing your concept test survey questions — Jotform has a concept-testing survey template ready for you to customize for your product or service.
There’s no reason to launch a product or service in the dark, not knowing how your customers will receive it. Concept testing surveys are the key to informed product development and design, and the questions you ask your customers are crucial to getting the right feedback.
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