Blind product test – an eye-opener for future innovations

The Challenge: Our Client wanted to replace the product of one of his major sub-brands on the market, aiming to attract consumers of competitive brands and prevent confusion of existing customers. The questions was which of the 2 alternative blends developed by his R&D department would be the best replacement of the current one?

The Approach: We designed and executed a quantitative survey: sequential monadic blind product test at a central location. We recruited regular consumers of the client’s own brand and the two key competitors. Each respondent tasted 3 products – the existing client’s product and the 2 new prototypes and was invited and encouraged to evaluate the beverages on certain attributes and to declare his preference for one of them.

A detailed look into the characteristics of prototype W298:

The Outcome: The analysis of the quantitative data revealed that both new prototypes underperform vs. the existing product, among all subgroups of consumers. Our input prevented the client from investing in an inferior product alternative and revealed that further improvements in the proposed product are needed.