Concept testing: methods and examples

When you have a big idea you want to get right, concept testing before launch can save you significant time and money. Concept testing is a market research method that evaluates whether a product, message, or campaign will resonate with your target audience before you commit resources to it. It can refine a product concept, ad campaign, new logo, or landing page by gathering feedback directly from the people you're building for.

Concept testing is a market research method that helps you evaluate whether a product, message, or campaign will resonate with your target audience. By testing early, before a full launch, you reduce the risk of failure and gain insights that shape development.

You can test a single idea or compare multiple concepts (such as in an A/B test) to see which performs better. Results help refine your offering and provide data to support internal decision-making.

Surveys are the primary tool for gathering feedback in concept testing. They allow you to reach your target demographic through online panels and collect input on how people perceive your idea. Whether you're testing a message, product design, or visual asset, surveys make it easy to gather structured, actionable feedback in a consistent format.

Concept testing serves two closely related teams differently, and the entity gap around "concept testing in marketing" is worth addressing directly.

The underlying research methods below are identical either way; what changes is the concept you put in front of respondents and the budget you're protecting.

Unfortunately, the consequences of pursuing a bad idea are often significant.

The consequences of pursuing a bad idea are often significant. A bad idea leads to a negative reputation, which heavily influences a business's ability to grow or remain stable. Hiring becomes 10% more expensive when a company has a bad reputation, and the cost of retaining workers grows by more than 20%. When a bad idea affects a customer's experience, 95% will share it with others, deterring prospects from purchasing.

Companies of all shapes and sizes are vulnerable to making mistakes if they don’t test their ideas first. Below are specific examples and a study showing that when a bad idea moves forward, it can be costly.

Expensive advertising: Companies that publish annoying online ads pay $.153 more per ad displayed. Given the number of times an ad gets shown can quickly become expensive.

Ineffective package and logo designs: Package design can make or break product sales. Cigarette maker Marlboro, for example, was mandated by the Australian Government to stop using its logo and typeface on its packaging. This contributed to the most significant decline in Australia’s purchase and consumption of cigarettes in 20 years.

Logo designs can cost brands millions of dollars. This makes the prospect of failure all the scarier. As a modern-day example, BP (a Britain-based oil and gas company) spent 136 million pounds on a new logo that’s been widely controversial.

Proving an idea is popular with consumers can convince a skeptical team to pursue it. If consumers in your target market like an idea, that's hard for internal stakeholders to argue against.

Key data point: Concept testing seems essential for marketers and product managers, so we surveyed them directly.

You can widen that competitive advantage further by improving how you write your survey questions. See our guide on eliminating order bias, and before you analyze your responses, learn about Top 2 Box scores.

There are four standard methods for concept testing, based on how many ideas you want to evaluate and whether respondents compare them directly.

This method is also called comparative testing and is used to determine how multiple concepts measure against each other. Survey respondents are usually asked to rate each concept against specific criteria. Another way to perform comparison testing is to use ranking questions or to ask precise questions to determine which concept features are preferred.

In monadic testing, you break your target audience into smaller groups. Each group tests one product feature and provides feedback. There is no comparison between concepts, simply an evaluation of features. Questions such as, “Does this concept provide value for the money?” are common in this type of testing.

Again, the target audience is broken into groups. Each group evaluates the concepts in a random, rotating sequence. Everyone in the target audience should get the chance to examine all of the presented concepts and provide feedback. Each group responds to the same set of questions at the end of the rotation.

A combination of sequential monadic and comparison testing, proto-monadic testing asks participants to examine concepts, compare features, and choose the best fit at the end of the rotation.

When you're ready to test your concepts, follow these four steps.

Concept testing methods apply to a wide range of business challenges. Here are a few examples.

Online surveys are a great way to test different creative concepts and designs to develop a logo that best visually communicates your brand, whether you need to understand how customers respond to a new logo or confirm it communicates a benefit like trust, innovation, or fun.

Use the Logo Testing Survey Template to brainstorm your questions, or let Logo Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad run the analysis for you automatically.

Redesigning your site or launching a new one? Sharing your design concepts with people who will one day interact with them is a great way to see what a sample of your target population thinks—and of course, make sure you get everything right.

Before you begin collecting feedback on your website, take a look at the questions from our Website Feedback Survey Template.

Many online marketers test headlines, images, and content to identify winning combinations of messages and designs. Which ad grabs the most attention? Is it compelling enough to click? Do the people who click become customers soon after? This kind of testing can meaningfully boost conversion rate optimization efforts.

Our Ad/Copy Testing Survey Template can help you ask the right questions, or use Ad Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad for fast, reliable feedback without building your own survey.

Planning to offer consumers an incentive for upgrading to a new product or service? Thinking about a new pricing system? Use migration path tests to assess initial reactions, and spot the key features and benefits consumers are looking for. Then, develop upgrade tests to see if your new product line will result in a boost in sales.

The name of your company or product shapes its success in the target market: it signals what you offer, the benefits customers can expect, and can elicit specific feelings.

Use the Name Testing Survey Template to brainstorm questions, or let Name Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad get crucial feedback on your brand name without spending time on survey design.

How price-sensitive are consumers in your target market, and are they typically satisfied or dissatisfied with the value of products in your category? Find out with the Price Testing Survey Template.

Learn what your packaging tells consumers about your product, including whether it's unique, visually appealing, and considered high quality by your target audience, with the Package Testing Survey Template.

Or get high-quality feedback on your packaging designs without building a survey yourself using Packaging Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad.

Will your messaging resonate with your target audience? Does it communicate your product's value effectively, and is it believable? Ask your target audience directly to know for sure, and consider checking with employees to see whether they understand and use your messaging in their day-to-day work.

Use Message Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad to find out if your messaging and claims resonate with your target audience quickly and effectively.

New product concept testing is used by some of the most successful businesses worldwide. Let’s look at some product concept testing examples from some of those companies.

When Tesla launched its Model 3 in 2017, participants were presented with the concept and an opportunity to put down a deposit on one of their own. 

The feedback allowed the company to raise an additional $400 million from investors.

Lego invested in concept testing to reach young girls, a market they were not attracting with their traditional building sets. Their concept testing revealed that girls wanted to create full environments rather than stand-alone structures.

Lego used these insights to design Lego Friends, a successful line of building sets that caters to a female demographic.

Yamaha is a global manufacturer of musical instruments. When they were designing their Yamaha Montage keyboard, they used concept testing to find out if their customers would prefer knobs or sliders for adjustments. They managed to collect valuable data quickly and accurately to inform their decision to use sliders.

Find out which features a product should include and which ones add nothing to your bottom line. This often involves determining your product's manufacturing quality and ease of use. Use product concept and usability tests to confirm your product meets customer expectations before it ships.

Read about the best ways to ask for product-specific feedback, and check out the Market Research Product Survey Template for a survey-methodologist-approved starting point. If designing your own survey feels too time-consuming for this project, Concept Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad can get you feedback on your product concept without requiring a complex survey build.

Concept testing works for new products, features, logos, advertisements, and more. Before you move forward with any of them, find out what works and what doesn't. Concept Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad gets you feedback on product, ad, and messaging concepts with your target audience, without building a complex survey by hand.

And explore the full range of market research solutions that incorporate guided methodologies like concept testing alongside AI-powered insights that reveal trends fast.