The importance of testing products in-store (and the downside of online concept testing)

Suppose you are working on an innovation you want to introduce with your colleagues. You want to know what your target group thinks of the concept to determine whether it has potential. You therefore decide to do an online concept test. In an online environment, you present the concept to your target group. The target group then provides feedback on aspects such as attractiveness, relevance and potential buying behaviour. The big challenge, however, is that online concept testing cannot measure the actual behaviour of consumers on the shopping floor. In this article, I take you through the importance of concept validation in the supermarket. Bonus: I show you the main differences between online and in-store testing.
 

What consumers say they are going to do is not always what they actually do.

If consumer insights play an important role in your job, you know that predicting consumer behaviour can be tricky. One factor that plays an important role in this is the fact that what consumers say and what they actually do often differ. For instance, many consumers have ‘green intentions’ and say they would be happy to pay a bit more for a more sustainable product. However, sales data show that most consumers opt for the cheapest alternative as soon as they stand in front of the shelf. You also have to deal with this intention-behaviour gap with online concept testing. After all, with an online concept test you can only ask about the intention of your target group, no matter how advanced the test is. Because of this, you always run the risk that a concept gets a very positive response during an online concept test, but this does not result in positive results in terms of rotation figures after launch. This is of course very annoying, because you want to make an impact with the innovations you launch.
 

How to be sure consumers would buy your product if you launched it. 

The above sentence may sound bold, but it is actually quite simple. If you want to be 100% sure that consumers would buy your product when you introduce it, you need to test your product in a few supermarkets before the launch. By placing your product in a few supermarkets, you simulate the introduction in a real-life way. Among other things, this allows you to see how your product performs among all the major competitors on the shelf. Moreover, during such an in-store test, you can interview consumers who grab your product or that of a competitor. This way, you learn more about the ‘why’ behind their purchase, and you can then use these insights to further optimise your concept. For both product innovations and product renovations, an in-store test works well to determine the potential of a concept.

A common counter-argument to validating a concept in the supermarket is that it takes a lot of time and money to make a product shelf-ready. As a result, it is not always possible (or affordable) to test a product on the shopping floor. This is a valid reason, but fortunately you can get almost the same validation with mockups. At Bamboo Brands, we test mockups instead of shelf-ready products to validate concepts at a much earlier stage of the innovation process.

The importance of a real-life context.

You've just read that in-store product or mockup testing is better at validating a concept than online testing. But how do you know this for sure? The best way I can explain this is by outlining two different scenarios:

Scenario 1: online concept test

Imagine you are a consumer and you have just received an invitation to an online concept test. It is late, you are tired from a long day at work, but you decide to join the test anyway. After all, you can ‘win’  a discount code for Amazon and it only takes a few minutes. During the presentation of the concept, you are distracted by your children; they make a little too much noise for you to concentrate properly. Still, you do your best to fill in the following kind of questions:

1. How interesting do you find this product?
2. What would you improve on this concept?
3. How likely are you to buy this product?

You try your best to answer the questions as best you can, but you find that it is difficult to give an answer. You know it's a test and it ever feels somewhat forced to give an answer. You have just completed the last question. You are happy that the test has been completed, but mostly happy with the discount code you just received.

Scenario 2: in-store test

As always, you walk into the supermarket to get your groceries for the week. You are a vegetarian and you feel like eating something tasty tonight, so you walk to the meat replacement shelf. At the shelf, you see a product you haven't seen before. You look at the packaging and it looks very tasty. You decide to put the product in your shopping basket and walk to the checkout. You charge for the product and walk out. Unsuspectingly, you have participated in a research project to validate that product.

The above scenarios show the importance of context in a concept test. In an online concept test, the context does not resemble ‘real life’, respondents are aware that they are in a test, and behave differently from when they do their shopping. In an in-store test, the context is 100% realistic and concepts are validated by consumers' actual behaviour. Our philosophy is therefore simple: the more real-life the context, the more reliable your research results.

Test your FMCG innovation or renovation in our network of 400+ supermarkets across Europe

Do you currently have a concept you would like to test in the supermarket? With Bamboo Brands, we help FMCG brands test products & mockups and interview consumers in our network of retailers across Europe. More information on what's possible? Then feel free to contact me at theo@bamboobrands.com. We'd love to help!