Product Testing

Perhaps this is a bit late, but here's something on product testing:

Product testing is usually conducted against one of three business objectives:
1. Productivity – To determine whether consumers react similarly to the current
available product and a new formulation that can be made less expensively.
2. Quality Improvement – To determine if product improvements result in more
favorable consumer reactions vs. the current offering.
3. Benchmarking – To determine how a current or new product compares to
competition.

There are essentially three types of product testing research designs and the design is chosen against the action standard/business decision moving forward.

Monadic Testing

As implied in the name, each person only tries one product and then the evaluative questions are asked, for eg, overall liking, value for money questions,etc.

A monadic test such as this is usually used for new products or line extensions. A current offering should be included as a control/benchmark.

Protomonadic Testing

A protomonadic design calls for two products to be tested by each person. The products are tested one at a time, with a monadic measurement only on the product tried first. After the second product is tried, preference is measured, both on an overall basis and for specific attributes.

This test design has historically been the “gold standard” for testing product changes and for competitive testing. The reason for this is that the protomonadic design provides both a strict single product measurement (monadic) and preference ratings. Most researchers agree that when a change is made to a product, you must measure preference to obtain the likely alienation the change may cause among the current franchise. At the same time, the monadic evaluations provide guidance for further improvement to the winning product, or to better understand deficiencies in the losing product.

Sequential Monadic

This name implies two things, first, that there's more than one product (usually two for a Home Use Test [HUT], but often three or more in a mall test); and second, that a respondent is tasting (or using) one at a time, with an evaluation after each about that specific product.

A sequential monadic test includes the same measurements as the monadic test (see
above) for each product. An overall preference question is usually included at the end of the survey. The key difference between a sequential monadic and a protomonadic test is that in the sequential monadic test, respondents provide a full set of ratings for each product tested; in a protomonadic test, respondents only fully rate the first product they taste or use.

The key benefit of sequential monadic over protomonadic is lower cost. A two-product
sequential monadic test would require only half the sample of a protomonadic or
monadic test. However, some feel that only the first product tested can be fairly
evaluated and rated since the respondent already knows the questions they will be asked about the second product they test. Therefore, some will argue the respondent is sensitized to certain dimensions of the product which could change the way they
evaluate it. Although rotating order can help to minimize order bias by spreading it equally among all products tested, it will not eliminate the bias.