Product Concept Testing Basics

When you're in the process of developing a product, you need to discover two separate but related principles. First, you need to figure out which product is most needed by potential consumers, in order to create a product that will earn you the most revenue. Second, you need to make sure that the features of the product are those that will attract, keep, and satisfy the most customers. These are the basics of product concept testing.

The concept phase generally starts out with your own ideas – or the ideas of that of your company. Chances are you started a company with specific goals in mind, so you're not starting from scratch with your product ideas.

However, you should never be married to a certain concept – you'll find that there are alternative versions of a concept that may have merit, or variations that may be potentially appealing. Now you're deciding on the product to develop, and you use surveys to poll the public (either the general public or a specific subsection, depending on the type of product) about which concept they prefer the most. You can attack this issue not only by looking at which product they like, but also exploring the product further such as: The potential of each product.

The weaknesses of each product. The features the products would need to have. The features the products might want to have.

The features the products shouldn't have. You can look at these answers for each individual product and use that information to weigh the pros and cons. Sometimes there will be a clear winner that is beloved by the general public, sometimes there will not be.

You can even study how easily a customer would respond to the product being put on the market and whether or not they would make a purchase, as well as how it could be marketed to improve on their willingness to purchase. You can also weigh the product against competition, see how easy it will gain traction in the market, and more. The concept phase is fairly detailed, and requires a lot of imagination on the part of your company and many types of surveys and studies to ensure its proper completion.

But since this is all used to develop your company's products (something that is extremely important for your company when you don't have a specific product in mind), it tends to be worthwhile. In the next article, we'll look at how to research product features.