Co-Creation is a iterative approach in Innovation and Product Development phases with consumer insights and innovation teams. It combines qualitative sessions and quantitative feed-back to developers to refine a product concept and jump start prototype development. It speeds bringing the right products to success in the market.
This is one tool for insights in Brand Positioning & Planning.
Truly understanding the consumer emotions about the ingredients—beyond “likes and dislikes”— enables development teams to creatively design ingredient cues that tells consumers the product will truly deliver the emotional impact promised by the brand.
Changing a product for any reason entails risk that current users will feel alienated and reject the new product. Risk vs benefit questions are "Will current users notice?" and "How will users react?"
Companies must weigh the potential business risks of change against benefits such as quality improvement, cost reduction, or regulatory or ingredient issues. Alienation testing engages with current users to quantify the risk they may alter their purchase behaviors in response to the proposed changes.
InsightsNow takes a unique behavioral approach in assessing this risk to predict how and why current users will react to a proposed product change. This includes a diverse array of situations where product changes are “blind” or accompanied by marketing communications. We may survey consumers in a central location, home use or extended home use environment.
First, determine how much alienation you are willing to accept, if any.
From the research identify ...
Alienation testing gives you the vital information you need to make business and product decisions.
Ensure that you don’t lose current users when doing a product change or update, and plan a strategy to tip the balance positive.
The percentage of people who would be alienated can be calculated by identifying the number of people who:
Quantify the sensory trade-offs for a proposed change.
Analysis through alienation testing looks at when a brand makes a product change, and there are several ways in which the brand’s franchise may respond to that change. Essentially, there are four possible reactions:
Research to help companies make faster, more informed clean label decisions requires accurate prediction of behavior reactions—approach or avoid—to branded products with given claims and ingredient labels. Asking a research participant to directly predict their behaviors in response to a brand, claim or ingredient is known to be a poor predictor of actual behavior.
Implicit testing avoids the inaccuracy of direct Q&A responses to yield a more accurate predictor of behavior. Through our simple context-based implicit questions, we capture native emotional (system 1) reactions as well as rational (system 2) thinking. As emotional choices are faster, measuring time to make a choice adds a valuable, new dimension for more informed product and brand decision making.
Where does this help me?
Therefore, it is an excellent technique to help researchers determine:
Implicit testing leverages context to measure emotional and rational reactions which motivate decisions. For example, within a breakfast occasion the behavioral reactions of participants may differ if the context for choosing a food item is a “convenient grab-and-go moment” or a “normal sit-down breakfast moment.”
Implicit testing measures not only approach or avoid, but the speed of response. This measure of response time quantifies whether an “approach or avoid” reaction is based on emotional (fast) or rational (slow) thinking.
Slow responses represent attitudes about brands, claims or ingredients which are poorly formed, or where the presented context is new to a participant. This forces the participant into a slower more rational thinking process about how to behave.
Fast responses represent well developed attitudes and strong memories within the presented context. This results in quick reactions based on pre-formed memories and emotions.
For examples of applications and data interpretation, view the recent webinar
"Going Behavioral with the Implicit / Explicit Test "
