Melodies in Marketing

Continuing on the subject of New Product Development, today I’ll cover the essentials of ‘Testing & Validation’. The purpose of this phase is to completely validate your project in terms of the product, its marketing plan, and the production. It is broken up into three phases:

Near Testing
Also known as alpha testing, here your main objective is to find the bugs. Your product is not a prototype any longer. It has nearly all the features of its commercial model in terms of appearance and functionality, though its packaging and promotional materials may not be fully ready.

You will want to test your product with and get feedback primarily from in-house staff, and additional parties like customers and partners you feel are close to the firm. Give them a clear understanding of how the product should perform so they know what to look out for. Have a few members of your development team observe participants using the product and/or conduct surveys to gather the needed data.

Field Testing
This process, also known as beta testing, is carried out usually for an extended period of time with a larger number of participants that includes customers, partners, and others whose feedback would be valuable, but may not be familiar with your company. Your product now fully resembles its planned launch model in all aspects. Participants’ interaction rate is higher and they are much better informed on the product’s functions, features, benefits, and intended use conditions.

Your product testing has three primary objectives. First, you will want to measure participants’ interest in the product and its features, their preference of individual attributes, and if they would be willing to purchase the product. It must not only be acceptable, but desirable compared to any current purchases or competitive offerings.

Secondly, you will want to find out how the customer uses the product and its durability under normal conditions. Are there particular applications, use environments, or occasions that are appealing? Not so appealing? What kinds of participants were these?

Third, you will need to record and analyze all the feedback received. This will give you hints on minor design improvements that will not significantly affect your production, and perhaps if a line extension should be added or dropped. Additionally, your participants’ responses will provide your sales & marketing team with words, phrases, and stories that can be used in communicating the product during the launch. The features and benefits that elicit the highest initial positive reactions can be used when designing advertisements, brochures and sales presentations.

Market Testing
This last form of testing is completely optional. Its costs versus benefits will depend on your unique product category, operational flexibility, and channel strategy. Basically it comes down to this: If you feel confident that your marketing and launch plans are sound, and you have a high degree of certainty about the product’s eventual sales, proceed to launch. On the other hand, if you want to test the launch strategy with a limited production run while refining your marketing plan, there are two options available:

• Simulated Market Test – Offered as a service of specialized consumer market research firms, this test involves exposing consumers to new products and their claims in a staged advertising and purchasing situation. The goal is to obtain an early forecast of sales and/or market share from the key metrics observed, applying mathematical forecasting models, and making adjustments through management assumptions and judgments.
• Trial Sells – Here you will test your product either through specific channels, geographic regions, or particular consumer demographics. The marketing campaign is limited in scope and size, however it resembles the expected launch plan to the full extent.

Summary
A ‘product’ can be a consumer/business good, service, software, website, album, film, catalog…anything that is the result of a creationary process. While what I’ve outlined above leans toward physical goods for commercial sale, the basic principles apply toward other products as well.

For information on other phases in npd, visit the master page on The Stage-Gate Model of New Product Development