In today’s globally connected world, every product has a potentially vast market. Trying to target everyone in this market with the same materials, approaches, and techniques would be crazy — people are too varied and different to respond to the same marketing message.

So how do you ensure your marketing connects effectively with as many people as possible in your target market? The only real solution is to use market segmentation.

In simple terms, market segmentation is the process of taking a diverse and varied market and dividing it into more homogeneous segments.

Typically you’ll split your market into sub-groups based on criteria like their needs, behaviours and attitudes. . Market segmentation is nothing new, but it delivers a wide range of benefits to businesses if you do it the right way.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at why market segmentation is so important, the benefits it delivers, and how you can do it effectively.

Why do we need it?

Targeting everyone in a broad market with the same message is a fast route to poor response rates and low conversion rates.

Imagine you’re selling a new smartphone. The kind of message that will resonate with a 19-year-old customer is likelyto be very different from the message that resonates with a 74-year-old. Whichever you opt for, you’ll end up alienating a segment of your market.

It’s crucial to split your market into different groups so you can use a more tailored marketing message for each one. This works across all channels, from social media ads to email and direct mail.

What are the benefits of market segmentation?

There are many good reasons to segment your market, such as:

  • Better conversion rates. The ultimate reason to use segmentation is to improve your conversion rates and increase your revenue. By targeting groups with an offering more relevant to them,  you boost your chances of a positive response.
  • It helps you lower acquisition costs by focusing on the most profitable customers. By targeting customers who are easier to sell to and bring on board, you’ll be able to focus your efforts more efficiently and avoid spending lots of resources on tricky customers. This is the approach MetLife took with their segmentation efforts, and it’s strategy we’ve used to great effect with a university looking to secure donations from its alumni. 
  • Create more tailored marketing content. By creating content and ads that are specifically targeted to a certain sub-group of your market, you’ll be able to build a closer relationship with customers. This ensures better retention and stronger connections that, over time, leads to more sales.
  • Better response to marketing campaigns. Email is one area where segmentation can work extremely well. Research by Mailchimp found that segmented campaigns had open rates 14.31% higher than those that didn’t use segmentation.
  • It saves cost. By increasing the accuracy of your marketing, you’ll get more for your money and ensure less is wasted on poorly targeted marketing campaigns
  • Greater personalization. In one report by SmarterHQ, 80% of people who classify themselves as frequent shoppers said they only shop with brands who personalize their experience. By segmenting your market, it’s possible to personalize your messaging and connect more deeply with your target audience.
  • Better service. A good segmentation can help you to provide more effective customer service. Some businesses empower their front of house or call centre staff with information as to what segment a customer falls into so that they can tailor their interactions accordingly. 
  • It provides a focus for further market research so that you spend your budget and time on getting to know your most valuable customers

How to do market segmentation

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Before you start segmenting your market, it’s important to know what to aim for. A good market segment should have the following attributes:

  • It’s big enough to be profitable. If your segment is too small, there simply won’t be enough demand for your product or service and you’ll fail to reach your goals.
  • The members of your market are similar enough to respond to one message. This is the main reason to segment — is your sub-group homogenous enough for the same marketing strategies to be relevant and effective?
  • It’s future-proofed. Will your segment stand the test of  time?
  • It’s distinct. The segment is memorable and easy to distinguish from other segments.

What categories should you segment your market into?

When it comes to deciding on the criteria for your segments, there are a number of options. Let’s take a look at some of the main types of market segmentation and the benefits and drawbacks of each.

  • Demographic segmentation. This involves using criteria like age, gender or income level to segment your customer base.. It’s one of the easiest ways to quickly start dividing up your market,but it is a very simplistic and outdated approach to segmentation. As Mark Ritson rightly argues “millenials are not a segment”. Assuming that everyone of a certain age has the same needs and attitudes and behaves in the same way is misguided and has resulted in some well-known marketing fails. Take Joon, Air France’s sub-brand for millennial travellers. Rooted in stereotypes, the brand alienated its target customers and crashed and burned. 
  • Geographic segmentation. Similar to demographic segmentation, segmenting your customers based on where they live can leave you in hot water. Assuming that all consumers are the same just because they live in the same place is reductionist and is unlikely to be effective as a segmentation strategy.
  • Behavioral segmentation. This type of segmentation is based on how customers have responded or behaved in the past in their interactions with your brand. It’ll help you understand your most profitable customers and what to sell to them but the drawback is in the name. This type of segmentation only tells you how customers have behaved in the past. As such, it’s a poor predictor of future behaviour, and it doesn’t provide any insights around motivations, values or needs which can help you connect with consumers on a deeper level. 
  • Psychographic segmentation. This segments customers based on their views, values and lifestyles. s . It makes it easier to create a more resonant and relatable marketing message and avoid alienating your market with views they won’t agree with.
  • Needs-based segmentation. This is by far and away the most effective approach to segmentation. Segmenting people with similar needs allows you to be more targeted in product and service design or marketing campaign development, as you can focus on addressing customer needs and pain points. What’s more needs-based segmentations tend to be more long lasting and future-proofed than other approaches. 

Market segmentation is a great way to ensure you’re targeting the right customers  and tailoring your interactions for maximum success.

It allows you to forge a deeper bond with your audience. and whilst, it requires more work than a one-size-fits-all message, it’s well worth it in terms of the results.

At Kadence International, we help our clients design effective market segmentation studies and do it in a way that maximizes revenue. To find out how we can do this for you, get in touch.

In the world of market research, we can only get so far by relying on hard, numerical data.

Hard metrics like (generated from quantitative research) are extremely useful and should form a core part of any business strategy. But they only tell part of the overall story.

To dig deeper and gain a fuller picture of why our customers behave the way they do, it’s important to consider supplementing quantitative research with a more  qualitative approach. Qualitative research is based on conversational and open-ended communication and aims to dive a little deeper than quantitative metrics and explore the why behind customer’s actions.

If you want to get the most out of your research, you should be using both approaches. In this guide, we’ll take a look at what qualitative research is, what makes it so useful, and how you can employ it in your own work.

How is qualitative research different from quantitative research?

Quantitative research:

  • Is more data-based, relying on hard data points and objective measurements
  • It uses statistics and numerical data to identify trends and patterns
  • Allows you to quickly establish what’s happening, and look at possible causes 

Quantitative studies are extremely valuable. They allow us to gain a reliable, accurate understanding of what’s happening in our market  and amongst our customers, and make clear-headed decisions that influence the bigger picture. But quantitative data alone isn’t enough.

Qualitative research is more human-focused. It’s less concerned with numbers and figures, and more focused on what customers have to say. It can take the form of interviews, focus groups or online communities  and its goal is to dig into the more intangible and subjective reasons why customers behave the way they do.

Why is qualitative research useful?

Qualitative research is useful because it helps us dive into the human factors driving our customers’ actions. People are complex and often unpredictable, and our behaviour can’t really be boiled down into a series of metrics..

For example, we might know that sales for one product are outperforming another. But why is this happening? Our hard metrics can show us the overall trend and might allow us to pinpoint certain glaring patterns, but they don’t tell us what’s going on in our customers’ minds.

For this, we need qualitative studies. We need to gain insight into the microtrends that lie beneath bigger patterns. 

The benefits don’t end there, though. Qualitative research means getting to know your customers and their motivations better. Here’s how that helps:

  • It can help you to understand customer needs, generating new ideas for products and services. 
  • It can provide valuable feedback on your existing offering. Using qualitative research you can explore pain points and barriers to use, helping you understand how to improve your current products and services.
  • It can be a useful input to your marketing. By truly understanding your audience, you can take a more personalized approach, speaking their language and talking to your customers in a way they can really relate to. It can also provide useful input to campaign or content development. By understanding customer needs you can create marketing content that solves specific problems for your audience and delivers real value in response to the challenges they face and the pain points they grapple with.
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Qualitative research methods 

Qualitative research is made up of a range of different methods and techniques. Each has its own use cases, and the best approaches will combine several methodologies based on your customers and your goals. Here are some of the main methods:

  • Focus groups. This is where you bring a small number of customers (usually less than 15) together in a group to discuss a particular issue. By tapping into the power of group dynamics, we’re able to uncover rich insights around attitudes and behaviours, and explore underlying motivations, need states and perceptions.
  • One-to-one, in-depth interviews. Here, researchers speak to customers directly, in a one-to-one setting. It’s a good way to get truly in-depth on a topic, delving into the participant’s opinions and gaining valuable feedback and insight. In depth interviews can be carried in person, on the phone or online. 
  • Expert interviews. Similar to in-depth interviews, expert interviews involve speaking to industry experts to build a rich understanding of the market and where it’s heading. This approach can help you explore the impact of emerging trends to help future proof your business.
  • Ethnography. This is where researchers immerse themselves in customers’ worlds to understand more about their day to day lives and the role that brands and products play. Ethnography can take different forms, from visiting consumers and accompanying them as they go about their day, to mobile self-ethnography where consumers complete video tasks to show us how they live. 
  • Online communities. This is where groups of consumers are brought together over a series of days on an online platform to explore specific issues. Consumers then complete individual or group tasks, enabling the researcher to uncover rich insights. Like mobile self-ethnography, online communities can involve photo and video tasks and are a great way of bringing an audience to life for key stakeholders. What’s more, as online communities consumers over a longer time period than an in-depth interview or a focus group, they allow you to explore complex or sensitive issues and uncover deep insights into attitudes and values to inform your decision-making.

Traditionally qualitative research was done according to the grounded theory method. This is a framework for research that involves collecting qualitative data through the above methods and then using that data to form a theory or hypothesis. However, it’s easy to underestimate the sheer amount of data you can collect through qualitative research and this is particularly true of online methods such as online communities. As such, it’s often not feasible to use the grounded theory method. At Kadence we take a different and more structured approach, exploring hypotheses with key stakeholders and designing the research so that we can test these. This means that the research is tightly focused on the areas that matter most to stakeholders, ensuring that the insights we uncover are actionable.  

Some examples of qualitative research questions you might ask:

  • How important is corporate responsibility to our customers?
  • What are the main reasons people use social media?
  • Why do people want to work for our organization?
  • How do adult males feel about hair loss?
  • What are the key motivations for  undertaking a weight loss programme?

Qualitative research is essential if you want to truly understand your customers and improve your product or service to deliver what they want and need. It goes hand in hand with more quantitative methods of research and helps add context, explanation, and depth to the more numerical and data-based metrics.

At Kadence, we can help you get the most out of qualitative research, to better understand your customers and market on all levels. To find out how, get in touch with us.

Marketing textbooks are littered with examples of products or services which flopped when they hit the market. 

Take Juicero, in which investors pumped a staggering $120 million – all for a wi-fi connected juice maker which nobody had indicated they wanted or needed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was scrapped within two years. 

Or ESPN’s mobile phone service, which was pitched at the wrong price – some $400 – whilst also offering the target audience a lack of choice around handset. The service was swiftly shut down, with ESPN instead opting to provide content to Verizon. 

And remember New Coke? Launched in 1985, it’s still remembered today as a major marketing misstep.The product was abandoned after only a few weeks, with Cola-Cola reverting back to its old formula. 

It’s clear that some of the world’s most innovative companies have failed to accurately foresee the impact of new launches when they hit the target market. Even Google, for instance, arguably launched its wearable Google Glass concept too soon. Its sky-high price did not help, and it failed to connect with consumers.

Fortunately there is a way to avoid this type of failure. By conducting  product concept testing before a product launch, businesses are able to develop their ideas in a safe and controlled space with the target audience ahead of launch.

The concept in question can be many different things. It might be a totally new set of product ideas that no one has ever seen before. It might be a redesign or rebrand.

Testing methods can be online, for instance via quantitative surveys or via online communities focused on gathering qualitative insight; or face-to-face, in a focus group or series of in-depth interviews. 

Whatever the method, conducting concept testing can pinpoint the value – or otherwise – of specific features and benefits, as well as indicating whether a product concept will be a major hit or a more niche offering which may not justify the cost and resources needed to make a reality.

Concept testing does require an investment in market research, but any costs at this stage will be minimal in comparison to launching a product which goes on to fail.

After all, testing is the process of uncovering what your potential consumers like or dislike about your concept, helping you identify which ideas will fly and guiding their future development to ensure success. What’s more, concept testing can enable marketers to understand what to communicate at launch, whilst also helping to identify the customer segments with the most potential

Here are the five key reasons why concept testing is so important:

1. Concept testing can help you filter ideas so you know which to develop further

Concept testing can help you move beyond blue-sky thinking and determine which of your ideas will be a hit. Rather than relying on subjective opinion, it gives you data that can bring the whole team on board by providing a consensus about which projects to develop and which to shelve.

In this way, great concept testing unites teams behind the ideas that have real potential. There’s no need to worry about office politics or lengthy and frustrating ‘design by committee’. With concept testing you can hear directly from the consumer what’s likely to cut it – and what won’t.

By using a range of qualitative and quantitative techniques, you can understand the consumer view of different concepts, and explore whether the products or services you’re looking to develop will resonate. Employing a range of testing tools enables you to identify the product concepts with the highest appeal, as well as understand how these can be refined. This allows you to move to the next stage of development with confidence.

It’s no overstatement to say that the use of a well-designed, concept testing survey or a skilfully moderated online community can pave the way to success. But any survey template or discussion guide needs to be designed in such a way that ensures that the overall package, as well as individual features or attributes are each assessed and fed back on. 

This is something that needs to happen in the early stages of decision-making, too. It cannot be left too late as the point of concept testing is to help you iterate your ideas and to tweak them ahead of launch so that they are primed for success.

2. Concept testing can help you steer clear of bad decision-making.

Testing concepts in detail before launch may sound like it will delay your go-to-market strategy, but in the long run it can save your organisation significant time, prevent financial losses, and protect your relationship with customers. Failed products or services are enormously costly but fortunately concept testing exists not only to help you avoid the bad ideas, but also to uncover those with untapped potential.

Concept testing can help you to find the strongest option to take forward among a number of choices or find ways to improve underperforming concepts. Either way, it’s a great way to ensure, quickly and easily, that whatever you’re planning has a solid chance of success. In this way, concept testing can help you avoid an embarrassing failure and take your product development processes from good to great, thanks to that all-important feedback from those who matter – your customers.

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3. Concept testing can help you understand what elements matter to consumers.

Even if you immediately gauge that your product ideas are likely to fly, there are still many additional things to consider through testing methods – such as your positioning, the kind of packaging or branding that would be considered attractive and –  arguably the most important factor in the production of any product or service – the most appropriate price.

In this way, a concept test is a way to optimise your innovation, drastically reduce the risk of project failure and limit excessive costs. Concept testing is crucial for product developers to determine the innovation’s chance of success. It can shed light on blind spots, inefficiencies, misinterpretations or problems that can lead to failure. Using testing methods like surveys as well as qualitative research, via a focus group, in depth interview or online community, can all help to tease out your target audience’s wants or needs.

4. Concept testing enables you to fix problems prior to launch.

The sooner concept testing is undertaken, the more flexibility there is for optimising your initial idea to develop a product that customers truly want and need. 


Through concept testing you can understand what elements don’t fly with customers so you can ditch underperforming elements to save costs or iteratively improve concepts so that they better meet consumer needs. With an online community, for instance, it’s possible to develop concepts based on consumer feedback, and then upload them for further feedback, in this way allowing you to refine ideas swiftly.

5. Ultimately, concept testing ensures that you develop products that consumers will buy.

Concept testing puts the consumer voice at the heart of product development, thereby ensuring that new products will resonate with customers, dramatically increasing business performance. 

The results of a concept test can help you to identify the pain – or the delight – relating to new ideas. Concept testing can  enable you to establish how your product would fit into the lives of your target audience; how often they might use it and, crucially, which product concept they would be willing to pay for.

Good concept testing means getting under the skin of your customer and letting their feelings and needs guide you towards the solutions with the most potential. By putting consumers central to product development, you can develop products and services that outperform the competition.

In order to achieve this, it’s important to partner with skilled market researchers that can design studies that get you the insights you need. From a qualitative perspective, this means professionals that can help people open up, answer fully, and elaborate on their responses to concepts. In an online community for instance, the researcher must carefully guide and curate the discussion in order to gain in-depth feedback. 


Ultimately, concept testing gives you a better idea of consumers’ reactions to your ideas. It clarifies the need your solution is addressing, consumers’ perceptions of the product, how it fares against other similar solutions, and what can be done to maximise adoption and market impact. 

So it should come as no surprise to learn that this type of market research can have a huge impact on your business, enabling you to understand where to focus efforts in product development by uncovering the view of the target market. 

Product development need never be risk, nor the creation of successful products be a wild stab in the dark. If you’d like our support with a concept testing project, please get in touch or request a proposal. 

Before they reach the target market, products or services always start off as unproven ideas. But in order to avoid costly failures, businesses need to understand whether or not they’ll be a hit with consumers.

Concept testing is the process of using qualitative or quantitative research in order to test your ideas ahead of launch. It enables you to ascertain which features are likely to be popular with the target audience, and which may need changing. 

Key methodologies and testing methods can include in-depth interviews, online communities and the use of a testing survey to gather feedback on your potential product.

Paving the way to success

Testing product ideas with your target audience enables you to optimise your approach before introducing products to the market, helping you to get features right from the earliest stage and to dramatically boost your chances of success, by asking potential customers what they think. It can also prevent costly failures so an investment in effective concept testing is a worthwhile investment.

After all, seemingly minor product features can have a fundamental effect. In this way, market research enables you to find out what potential customers care about in order to determine which attributes should be incorporated into the final design, ahead of the official product launch.

Product and concept development

Behind almost every successful product is a careful research and development phase – and we’ve worked with some of the biggest brands to take their big ideas, and turn them into products consumers love.

But how do you test a product concept effectively?

Here are five examples of how to test concepts for any potential product.

1. Run an online survey to test overall concept appeal and to narrow down your options

A concept test survey can be a powerful tool. A testing survey can reach large audiences of carefully targeted consumers, providing rich data to be analysed. It is possible to test a number of concepts, in order to understand their appeal and to help you decide which concepts to take forward for further testing.

Product developers know that the use of effective survey questions is a proven way of generating relevant information on which to base future decisions. Questionnaires are typically used for obtaining valuable data. For example, to ascertain how many potential customers there are, whether they would find such a product or service useful, and the sort of price they would be willing to pay. 

The key is to ask the right people the right questions, and to ask enough people to get meaningful results. Often a likert scale is used; a type of scale used to rate various features or attributes, in the eyes of end users. Do bear in mind, too, that you need to approach a significant sample of people who match the profile of your target audience when sending out questionnaires.

Effective concept testing can also give you relevant information and clear pointers as to which demographic groups, geographies or market segments will get as excited about your idea as you are.

2. Employ conjoint analysis to understand which features really matter to consumers

As well as asking potential customers which concept they prefer, you can use techniques like conjoint analysis to gauge which product features are most important. This is a technique which involves presenting people with a series of attributes and asking them to rank them in order of appeal.

Conjoint analysis is regarded as an effective way of gaining detailed insights. Essentially, it’s a way of measuring the value that customers place on a product’s specific features. It typically works via a survey, in which participants are shown a combination of attributes and asked to compare or rank them. It can help to measure and understand customer preferences for particular features, to generate actionable insights to guide the development of the product.

Whilst the process involves offering respondents a range of choices. It’s important, however, not to overload respondents so that they remain fully engaged with the process.


This approach can help you identify the features that matter to consumers. Use this to categorise features into ‘need-to-have’ versus ‘nice-to-have’. Consider which features and functionality your product really needs in order to be compelling to the target market to prioritise your investment.

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3. Use qualitative methodologies to hone your ideas along with the target audience

Group discussions are a tried and tested way of getting rich qualitative input. We can bring groups of potential customers together – face-to-face in a focus group or in an online community – and conduct a carefully guided discussion, often with prototypes or other stimuli to spark conversation. This allows us to drill down into the product features that consumers really want or need. Qualitative research can also reveal unmet needs, inspiring further development and ensuring your product or service has an edge over the competition.  

 
In some cases, qualitative feedback can be gained by conducting one-on-one in-depth interviews. This is particularly useful if you have a detailed or complicated concept that’s targeted at a niche B2B audience.

It’s important to use open-ended questions to gather insights: Ask respondents what they like and dislike and give them the space to explain their views. This provides the opportunity to get objective feedback from your target audience without restrictions or bias, and to obtain detailed and actionable feedback. 


Questions can include, for instance, ‘How appealing are following the features?’ or ‘Which of the following attributes are most important to you?’ or ‘How well do these statements describe the product?’ 


Choosing the right questions, moderating the discussion, probing at the right intervals and keeping respondents engaged is key to successful product concept testing. With so many products failing, testing your concept early is also vital. By testing product concepts thoroughly and early, you’ll know which concepts are likely to drive revenue before you have invested too much time and effort in development.

4. Embrace an agile and iterative testing approach

Another way to test product concepts is to develop an agile and iterative testing approach. Online methodologies like online communities lend themselves well to this, as it’s possible to test concepts, gain feedback, adapt the concepts based upon this and then retest them with consumers.

An online community is an online research platform where consumers are brought together to take part in a series of tasks. The discussion is curated by our team of researchers in order to gain in-depth feedback which will enable effective concept iteration.

The online community platforms we use have built-in features for concept testing. For example it’s possible to mark up images to highlight which aspects you like or dislike, adding detailed commentary. The results of this exercise can be analysed and the concept iterated accordingly, with the new and improved idea put back into the community for further feedback and testing. The result? By harnessing feedback loops to refine and retest, you’re able to develop the strongest concept possible. 

Even after your product has launched, there’s real value in continuing to gain feedback. Once your product is in consumers’ hands, there’s more to learn about the role it plays in people’s lives, and any unforeseen pain points that  could require further changes to address. Be ready to test your product concept to ensure it gets better and better. By honing and refining your product features you can continue to stay ahead of the competition. So always refine and iterate. Successful product innovation is never finished. The beauty of product concept testing is that you have the luxury of being able to respond to feedback until you hit on the optimum prototype. 

5. Harness new technology to bring ideas to life for consumers 

To get the most out of respondents during a piece of concept testing research, it’s important that you bring concepts to life by creating stimuli that enables the target market to picture your proposed products or services. With our own design team in house we can take your initial ideas and turn them into beautiful mock ups that ensure the core idea is clear.

To take this a step further, we are currently exploring how we can use augmented reality (AR) to really bring concepts to life, thereby eliciting higher quality insights. Through AR we can create 3D digital prototypes that consumer can place in real environments using their phone. Not only do immersive methods like this deliver richer insights, but they also allow you to test ideas in context.

Get under the skin of your potential customers in this way and let their feelings and needs guide you towards the solutions with the most potential. The results will speak for themselves.

To find out more, please visit our concept testing services page or request a proposal from our team. 

What is a central location test?

Essentially, it’s a way of carrying out product market research that’s done in a controlled environment, not in the participant’s home.

In this way, it differs from methods like online surveys or online communities. Sometimes, central location tests are referred to as “hall tests”.

The main reason to use these tests is to be able to test physical products in a face-to-face setting, exercising more control of the testing process. By being in the room with the participants, it’s easier to control for bias, engage more with the process, and ideally gain accurate and useful results.

In this article, we’ll dive a little deeper into the reasons for carrying out central location tests, the different types available, and share best practice tips for conducting this type of research. Let’s get started.

Why Conduct A Central Location Test?

Here are some of the most common reasons for conducting a central location test for your products:

  • It helps minimize bias. In a central location test, everyone is monitored together in the same space. It’s easy to eliminate outside influences, present questions in the same order to avoid confusion and ensure participants answer logically.
  • You can observe body language and other types of indirect feedback. This isn’t always possible online, but it can be very useful when making decisions. Participants might also say things or raise questions that they wouldn’t have the chance to do otherwise, which can lead to a more detailed understanding of their opinion.
  • You can test things like taste, smell, and touch, which typically isn’t always possible if the test is conducted at home, without the logistical challenge of sending products to each respondent.
  • It’s convenient. Testing large numbers of people in the same place at the same time helps save time and resources.
  • You can ask follow-up questions and tailor interactions with participants in real-time based on their responses. This allows you to go further to capture additional information than might be possible with other testing methods.

The Different Types of Central Location Tests

There are a number of different ways to carry out your central location tests. Here are the main models:

  • Monadic. This is where everyone focuses on the same product. The goal is simple: assess how well it would work if taken to market.
  • Paired comparison. Here, participants compare two products and choose which one they think is best.
  • Sequential monadic. First, participants assess one product, as in the monadic model. Then, they move on to a second product and assess that. Finally, they compare the two.
  • Proto-monadic. This is slightly different from the above. Participants start by assessing one product (product A), then go straight into comparing it with another. The order is usually rotated between participants, so each product gets to be product A an equal number of times.
  • Repeat paired comparison. Here, participants assess the same pair of products multiple times. The goal is to make sure feedback was not random or based on first impressions, with the goal of getting a more accurate end result.
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How to Conduct a Central Location Test

Recruit the right sample of participants. This is usually done by looking at your target customer base and then scaling it down so it’s small enough for the test. The most important part is to get a representative spread but also focus only on people who really are in your target demographic.

Find a good venue. This will depend on how many people you are planning to engage. It also needs to accommodate the logistical needs of the test. We have a network of tried and tested venues we’ve used over the years in multiple markets. 

Make sure you’re working with a trained team. Your team needs to be trained to ask questions, monitor responses, and ask any required follow-up questions. They’ll need to know how to do this in a way that avoids bias and doesn’t steer the participant in a certain direction.

Design the survey well. Here are some tips:

  • Include an introduction to the survey. This can be written or verbally delivered, but it should clearly explain how everything works, address any confusion, and explain the reasons behind the survey.
  • Start with some screening questions. These are usually based on things like age and profession, and the goal is to disqualify candidates who don’t fit into your target demographic or who simply aren’t a good fit. Screening can also be done in advance if you are pre-recruiting for the central location test. 
  • Make sure the questions follow logically and intuitively. Group similar questions together, and try not to mislead or confuse your participants.

Analyze and take action. Once the central location test is complete, it’s time to analyze the results and implement your findings. This is perhaps the most important part — if you do this incorrectly, you risk wasting the investment in the entire process. Ensure the results are clearly presented, and any key insights are highlighted so your stakeholders can understand them. This way, you’ll be able to use the findings to convince others in your company and drive real action.

Is Central location testing (CLT) cost-effective?

Central location testing can be a cost-effective approach for market research, depending on the specific context and research objectives. CLT allows researchers to gather data from a large number of participants in a controlled environment, which can offer cost savings compared to conducting individual interviews or surveys. By bringing participants to a central location, researchers can efficiently collect data from multiple individuals within a short period.

Additionally, the centralized setting allows for standardized procedures, streamlined logistics, and easier management of participant recruitment. However, it’s important to note that the cost-effectiveness of CLT depends on factors such as the size of the target population, the complexity of the research objectives, and the resources required for the facility and equipment rental. CLT may require additional costs for participant incentives, venue rental, moderator fees, audiovisual equipment, and data analysis.

Researchers should carefully plan and design the CLT study to maximise cost-effectiveness, ensuring that the sample size, research objectives, and methodology align with the budget and desired outcomes. It’s also worth considering alternative research methods, such as online surveys or virtual focus groups, which may offer cost advantages in certain situations.

While central location testing can provide valuable insights and efficiencies, its cost-effectiveness will vary depending on the research context and careful consideration of budgetary constraints.

Focus Groups and Central Location Testing

Focus groups are a commonly used technique within CLT. In focus groups, a small group of individuals is brought together to engage in a guided discussion led by a moderator. This interactive format allows researchers to delve deep into participants’ opinions, attitudes, and preferences. Through open and dynamic group conversations, focus groups provide qualitative insights into consumer perceptions, motivations, and behaviours. By incorporating focus groups into CLT, businesses can gain valuable feedback, generate ideas, and uncover nuanced insights to inform decision-making and drive product development. The rich and interactive nature of focus groups makes them a powerful tool for understanding consumer perspectives and refining strategies to create products that better meet customer needs.

Challenges and How to Avoid Them

If your central location test is properly planned, uses trained staff, and is professionally designed, it should run smoothly. However, here are some challenges to look out for.

  • Interviewer cheating. Sometimes interviewers can deliberately provoke biases or push participants towards certain answers. This can be avoided by working with a trusted partner and reliable staff.
  • For certain types of central location tests — for instance, where you’re recruiting people from a mall and then bringing them to a central location testing facility, you can face problems in recruiting if there are fewer shoppers than usual. For this reason, it’s best to organize tests and recruit participants in advance.
  • Biased responses to interviewers. Sometimes, participants might have a very positive psychological response to their interviewer. Maybe they like their personality or their looks. In these cases, they can give answers that might differ from their beliefs. This is another reason why training your interviewers carefully is so important.

Central location testing is a great way to get feedback on your products in a face-to-face environment with a reduced risk of bias. It allows for more interaction between interviewers and participants, delivering much more accurate and nuanced responses.

At Kadence, it’s our job to ensure you create and conduct the most effective market research projects possible — including central location tests and surveys. To find out more about how we can help, reach out to us and request a proposal.

What is concept testing? Essentially, it’s the process of getting your audience to evaluate or give feedback on an idea before releasing it to the public.

It can be used for adverts, physical products, websites, landing pages, and more. Here are some of the main reasons to use concept testing:

  • It’s a great way to evaluate ideas early on and make tweaks before sending something out to the wider public
  • It helps your team get company buy-in on ideas, justifying decisions by proving they work with empirical data

For these reasons and more, companies draw on the power of concept testing to make sure the ideas they come up with are actually viable in the real world before putting them out.

In this article, we’ll take a deeper dive into concept testing and what it’s all about. We’ll cover how to do it and the steps you’ll need to take.

How Does Concept Testing Work

Concept testing takes different forms depending on what you want to test, but generally, the process involves asking current or target customers e to engage with your concept and then evaluate it – either in person (for instance in a focus group) or online (either in an online community or by completing a survey or questionnaire to evaluate it.)

One of the most popular and effective ways of testing concepts is through an online survey so in this article, we’re going to focus on our top tips for getting this right.

When testing concepts through an online survey we ask questions to determine the appeal of the product, how innovative consumers thought it was, and so on. The goal is to gather feedback and to find out how the typical customer will respond to the concept, along with identifying any areas that need improvement.

So how do you get started?

How To Approach Concept Testing Through An Online Survey

Set a Clear Goal at the Outset

Before beginning, it’s extremely important to set a clear goal for your test. This is crucial because it’s what gives the survey its overall structure and direction.

Ask yourself and your team questions like:

  • Why are you doing this?
  • What kind of action will you take with the results?
  • How does this test fit into your overall strategy?

The answers to these questions will help you select your testing population better, choose the right metrics to track, and conduct a more effective and coherent survey.

Pick the Right Metrics to Track

The metrics you choose to track in your concept test are extremely important. They can make the difference between a useful survey that drives genuine positive change, and one that has very little effect other than to waste resources. Some examples of metrics to track include:

  • Purchase intent (how likely would you be to hit the buy button?)
  • Innovativeness (how innovative is the concept?)

These metrics will form the basis of your questions and shape your survey. Questions should focus on areas such as likes and dislikes, overall appeal, uniqueness, and innovativeness.

Give Your Survey A Clear Structure

Your survey should have a clear and coherent structure. Each section should follow intuitively from the next, with similar questions grouped together. You don’t want participants feeling  confused or frustrated at any point — it should all make sense.

A good way to help this along is by including an introduction section that clearly outlines what the respondent should expect from the survey, , along with instructions on how to complete it.

It’s also important to consider which method you want to use. Here are the main options:

Concept Testing Survey Methods

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The two main types are monadic design, which uses a single concept, and sequential design, which asks the participants to compare multiple concepts.

Let’s break that down a little further:

  • Single-concept (monadic) design. Here participants analyse one concept, learn the features, and then give their feedback and opinions in a survey. It’s a great way to get in-depth responses around one single concept, but it can be time-consuming and expensive.
  • Multi-concept (sequential) design. In this kind of test, participants do all the above, but then move onto another concept and repeat, and so on. It saves time and money by combining multiple concepts into one session, but there is a risk of participants getting bored and giving lower-quality responses as time goes on. What’s more, responses can be influenced by the order in which concepts are presented, so we make sure to always randomise the order to avoid any bias.

How Long Should a Concept Testing Survey Be?

There are many different opinions on how long your survey should be but our view is that it shouldn’t be any longer than 20 -25 minutes, At this point, respondents can suffer from what’s known as “survey fatigue” and the quality of responses can deteriorate as attention drops For example, SurveyMonkey recommend keeping it under 30 questions. Fewer focused questions can be better than dozens of less relevant ones.

Ultimately, it will depend on your concept, your audience, and the resources you have available.

Ask Screener Questions and Demographic Questions

Screener questions are a way to see if your respondents are relevant to your customer base. They’re usually placed at the beginning of the survey, and the goal is to filter out unqualified participants.

You shouldn’t be too specific here — you don’t want to filter everyone out. For example, let’s say you’re testing an online payment service. The screener question might be, “How often do you shop online?” 

Demographic questions usually come at the end of the survey. They’re a way to find out a little more about the people you’re speaking to and . usually focus on things like age or profession. Collecting information on demographics allows you to ensure that your survey is representative, as well as to analyse responses based on age, gender or socio-economic grade to identify any significant differences. Demographic questions can be considered sensitive, so by putting these at the end of a survey, you avoid people being put off from taking part in the survey from the outset.

Send the Survey Out

Once the survey is ready, it’s time to select a sample of people to test it on. This should be  representative of your overall population you are interested in targeting.

Analysis and Action

The final (and most important) part of the process is to analyze the results of your concept test and take action.

The way you analyze the results depends on how the survey was structured. For example, if your survey used Likert scores (asking participants to answer on a scale of ‘very unlikely’ to ‘very likely’, you can use something called top 2 box scores in your analysis. This allows you to use one metric to compare across concepts or attributes. Remember –  never pick a ‘winner’ unless there’s a statistically significant difference.

When you have your results, it’s time to put them to use. You can use your results to justify a product launch, get buy-in for a concept, or fuel further R&D.

When sharing your results, for example with company management, it’s important to be as clear and detailed as possible. Do all the work for them, and leave them in no doubt about your findings.

Concept testing can be an extremely effective way to get hard data in support of a concept. It helps you and your team make clear-headed, evidence-based decisions and create products that delight your customers and drive the company forward.

To find out how Kadence can help you harness the power of concept testing — and take a more data-driven approach to your organisation in general — reach out to request a proposal.

Survey design is an important part of doing business and market research. Put simply, it refers to the process of creating surveys that get responses.

This is important because it allows you to better understand the market and your customers, so you can make more data-driven decisions, and fix areas that are falling short. Done right, a good survey can be the driving force for huge positive change.

How to design a survey

Planning

The first stage of survey design is all about planning. This is where you’ll decide what you want to focus on, why you’re running a survey at all, who you want to target, and more.

If you don’t get this stage right, you’ll end up with a survey that doesn’t have any clear goals, or fails to achieve its objectives. To get any meaningful feedback from a survey, you need to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve.

This initial stage is extremely important and is not something to skim over or rush through. In fact, the planning stage should take up a large chunk of the overall process.

1. Figure out your goals

The goal of the survey is what gives it structure and influences every part of the process. Here are some examples of goals for surveys:

  • Find out what customers think about your brand versus the competition 
  • Assess the main challenges faced by customers in your industry
  • Learn what customer like the most and least about a specific product

Goals should typically be narrow enough that there is no risk of confusing your stakeholders or your respondents. Narrow goals also avoid overwhelming your respondents with questions.

A clearly defined goal helps the team draw inspiration and stay united and focused. Once you have decided on a goal, you’ll have a much better idea of what type of  questions to ask, the type of respondents you want to reach , and so on.

In other words, you need to set a goal in order for the rest of the process to click into place.

2. Decide who you want to target with your survey

The next stage of the planning process involves deciding who will actually take part in your survey. 

This is called the target population, and it should reflect the goal. For example, if you’re asking how your product impacts a person’s job it’s probably not a good idea to target people under 16, or people over 70 as they are unlikely to be working.

3. Choose the right sample

The target population you choose will often be too large to effectively survey. This means you’ll have to select a sample — a smaller group that represents the larger demographic. You can then take these results and extrapolate them to the wider population.

Done right, this group will be representative enough to act as a miniature version of the whole. Sampling allows you to achieve your goals with a fraction of the cost, time, and resources required to survey the entire target population, which in most cases, would simply not be possible.

4. Pick the right survey method

This stage of the planning process will be driven by your goal and your target demographic. Some examples of different methods include:

Every method has its pros and cons. Online surveys enable you to reach a large number of people quickly, but they’re less appropriate if you’ve got a physical product you want people to interact with. Instead a central location test might be more appropriate in this instance.

Every survey is different. If your target population is mostly people over the age of 65 or in geographical locations where internet access is not widespread, online  surveys will probably not be the best method. Likewise, a central location test might not work well if your target demographic is very busy.

Once you have decided on a goal, established a target population and a sample, and chosen the method for your survey, it’s time to get down to actually creating it.

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Creating your survey

Creating your survey is all about making it as easy as possible for your respondents to read, understand, and answer. If you overwhelm them with information and confusing formats, they’ll quickly give up and you’ll end up with fewer answers and a smaller pool of data at the end.

Here are some ways to make your survey as effective as possible:

Use questions wisely

The best way to ask questions is sparingly. You need to ask enough to gather a good amount of information, but if you use too many you risk driving your respondents away.

It’s always best to start with a clear introduction that introduces the survey, explains the format, and addresses any initial questions the reader might have. You might then start with some screener questions (about age or job title, for example) to filter out any respondents who don’t match the target demographic.

  • Don’t waste questions — only ask when necessary
  • Ask one question at a time, combining multiple questions into one creates confusion
  • Choose the right question type for your audience, mode of survey, and what you’re asking. Options include multiple-choice, open questions, closed questions, ratings, and so on.
  • Keep your questions short, simple, and clear. Avoid using jargon and including unnecessary information.
  • Design and layout is important — make it clear which questions to answer and how

Executing the survey

Once the survey is planned and created, it’s time to actually carry it out. If you have done the earlier stages correctly, this part should run smoothly. However, in practice, errors and unexpected setbacks are common. Here’s how to execute your survey in the best way possible:

Work with trained researchers

If your survey will be carried out in person or on the telephone, it’s important that your staff know how to ask questions. Make sure you’re working with a team that is trained to ask open-ended questions correctly, in a way that avoids confusion or tempts bias.

Pilot surveys

A common practice is to conduct a smaller pilot survey before the main one, which can help identify any problems with the survey and give you an opportunity to make some tweaks before sending it to the full sample group.

Avoiding bias

One of the main challenges when conducting surveys is bias. It’s easy to accidentally lead your respondents down a certain path and encourage them to answer in a certain way, which you must avoid in order to get accurate and valuable results. To minimize bias:

  • Avoid leading questions like comparisons with other companies or products
  • Keep questions as precise and simple as possible to eliminate the risk of misunderstanding
  • Try to predict inherent biases in your target group and work to mitigate them

Analyzing and sharing results

After the survey is complete, the final steps are to analyze and share the results. This is an extremely important step, as this is where you put into practice what you learned and draw value from the survey.

It’s important to categorize and analyze the results properly. This process might be as simple as collecting the results in an excel spreadsheet, or it might be much more detailed, using a range of advanced analysis techniques..

Think about how the survey relates to your overall business and marketing, and how you can act on the insights you gained and use them to achieve your goals.

Create a summary report

A summary report is a great way to share your results with your stakeholders in the business. It’s a document that breaks down what your survey set out to achieve and what the key findings were. We regularly create summary reports, as well longer, more detailed reports for our clients. 

Make sure to clearly show what your aims were and what you learned, and present this in a way that anyone – regardless of market research literacy – can get to grips with. It’s worth working with a good designer to present the findings in the best way possible. At Kadence we have our own design team who help us to create impactful reports that make data easy to understand and act upon.

Survey design can seem like a challenging process, and it does require input and collaboration from many parts of the company.

However, the rewards are worth it. A well-designed survey can provide a much more intimate understanding of your customer base and how your products and services are received. It can yield incredibly valuable feedback and prompt much-needed change.

To find out how Kadence can help your organisation plan more effective surveys and harness data for maximum effect, reach out to request a proposal.

What is conjoint analysis? It’s often lauded as an extremely effective way to gain detailed insights and conduct market research, but how does it work?

Essentially, conjoint analysis is a way of measuring the value that customers place on a product’s features. It typically works via a survey, which looks something like this:

  • Participants are shown a combination of features (called attributes) for a product. If the product is a smartphone, for example, they might be shown the price, memory size, screen resolution, and camera quality.
  • They’re then asked to compare different attributes. For example, what would they choose out of a $150 phone and a $250 phone? Do they prefer 32GB of memory or 64GB? There are several different ways to structure this, as we’ll find out.
  • After the answers have been collected, it’s up to us to analyze the results to inform the right marketing decisions.

In this article, we’ll look at this process in more detail and dig deeper into the different types of conjoint analysis and the various benefits it can deliver. 

Why do conjoint analysis?

There are several reasons to conduct a conjoint analysis. These include:

  • To measure and understand customer preference for certain product features
  • To assess or predict how well a product will do if brought to market
  • To gain an understanding of how changes to price affect demand
  • To predict future trends, for example around the adoption of certain features

How to do conjoint analysis

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Choose the right survey type

The first stage is to decide on the correct survey type. There are several ways to do a conjoint analysis — here are the main methods.

  • Ratings-based conjoint analysis. This is where participants give each attribute a rating, for example on a scale of 1-100.
  • Ranking-based conjoint analysis. This is where participants rank the attributes in order from best to worst. There is also best vs worst analysis, where participants simply pick their favourite and least favourite attributes out of the selection.
  • Choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC). This is the most commonly used model and the one this guide will focus on. It presents combinations of attributes to participants and asks them to choose which they prefer.

One of the most powerful advantages of choice-based conjoint analysis is that it can allow you to use modelling to predict how customers will feel about combinations they didn’t even assess.

In other words, in an extremely efficient way of predicting responses to features without having to spend a huge amount of time testing each combination.

Identify the relevant attributes (features)

Next, it’s time to decide which product attributes you want to have your respondents compare and assess. The key is to not use too many. We typically avoid using more than 5 or 6 attributes e.g. for a car colour, engine size. We do this to reduce the cognitive load on respondents to ensure they really engage with the choices presented to them. 

For each attribute, you need to add levels. For example, if your participants are assessing a smartphone, one attribute might be ‘price’, and the levels might be $200, $350, and $700.

The levels will usually reflect the different tiers of the product you’re considering selling. For the smartphone, you might be releasing a basic model, a higher-end model, and a deluxe model. The levels for attributes such as price, camera size, and memory will align with those tiers.

Levels should be chosen based on factors like:

  • How interesting and valuable they are for management — will they inform useful decisions?
  • How well they avoid bias
  • How realistic they are

In the CBC method, there are two commonly used models for making choices:

  • Single choice with none. This requires the participant to make one choice out of the selection. There is also the possibility to select none of the options.
  • Single choice. This is the same as above, but there is no ‘none’ option — the participant has to pick one. 

Design the questionnaire

Screener questions

Most Surveys start with some screener questions. These are general questions around demographics like the respondent’s age, job title, or purchase habits. The goal is to filter out those who won’t be a good fit for the survey based on the people you’re trying to target.

Introduce and explain

It’s important to take some time at the beginning of the survey and in your questions to clearly explain  what the respondents need to do to answer the question. Surveys should be as clear and easy to follow as possible.

Create the right questions

The questions you choose, and how you structure them, will make or break your survey. Here are some guidelines to follow:

  • Questions should follow on from one another logically and be grouped together intuitively. It’s best not to confuse your participants by ordering your questions in a confusing way.
  • People often give more accurate and useful answers when you use situational questions g. For example, instead of asking, “Which phone would you buy”, ask something like, “Thinking back to the last time you purchased a phone — if you had the following options instead, which would you have picked?”
  • Finish with some demographic questions so that you can further understand your customer base and analyse the results by demographic to understand any meaningful differences.

Analyze and take action

Once the survey has been written, scripted , sent out, and completed by your target group, it’s time to analyze the results and take action on them. This is perhaps the most important part of the process, as it’s where your research can really make a tangible impact.

There are several ways to analyze your results, based on how you designed the survey. The most important thing is to collect and analyse your data in a way that makes it easy to draw useful conclusions and share them.

This will allow you to gain real value from the survey and present those findings to others in the company. This:

  • Helps justify your decisions and actions
  • Informs future plans and inspires new features
  • Identifies areas that need to change or improve

At Kadence, it’s our job to ensure you create and conduct the most effective surveys and market research possible, giving your brand the edge. To find out more about how we can help with conjoint analysis and more, get in touch to request a proposal.