In my last blog I discussed how you can ascertain whether your idea is worth building into product at very high level. In this blog I will try to go over details of what type of activities you should perform, what methods are available and what should you try to learn during your concept testing and market validation of your idea.
During your concept testing and market validation I recommend you to plan on doing at least following research activities to
- Target market assessment
- Concept/Prototype development
- Demonstrate unique value proposition
- Validate market for your product & assess salability
Theoretically speaking concept testing is the process of using quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate customer response to a product idea prior to the introduction of a product to the market. The various methods generally used for concept testing are
- Personal interviews
- Focus groups
- Structured surveys
- Conjoint analysis
- Channel interviews
- Competitive profiles and benchmarks
You can be rest assured that your market validation process is successful if you have
- Understood the existing workflow and business or consumer problems
- Assessed the alternate solutions (not competitive products)
- Assessed competitive products
- Identified benefits the new concept will provide
- Quantified the value of product features
- Assessed interest in alternative product configurations
- Tested pricing sensitivity and demand
- Understood the purchase process and decision makers
On a lighter note I remember reading somewhere “Jumping into a startup without market testing can be like skydiving without a parachute”
But I beg to differ because I believe that
“Jumping into a startup without market testing can be like skydiving without testing the parachute”.
The reason I say that is because in my opinion everyone who jumps into a startup almost always believes that they have a parachute (their idea) but only thing they don’t know is whether it will work or not?
What do you think?