The Power of Behavioral Insights in Concept Testing

Numerous new product concepts are developed every year. In traditional research, the decision to turn these concepts into real products often depends on how consumers respond to a simple question: “How likely are you to buy this product?” How people respond to this question often differs significantly from what actually happens. This hypothetical bias can be as large as 594%!¹

Last week, at the Insight Innovation Exchange held in Amsterdam, Rainier van Rietschoten (co-founder of Veylinx) presented with Joost Verhagen (senior CMI manager at Unilever) how behavioral data can reveal realistic insights in concept testing. Rainier and Joost argue that the future of market research will move away from claimed behavior and get closer to actual purchase behavior.

Veylinx Co0Founder Rainier van Rietschoten presented how Veylinx could measure real purchase behavior for Unilever using online auction experiments. Unilever’s challenge was identifying the concept potential and target group of a new spread product. The experiment's elicited willingness to pay revealed clear insights into consumers’ true valuation for different concepts.

Testing concepts in a real shopping context demonstrated how realistic and valid the data can be. This data was turned into actionable insights that brought significant business impact for Unilever. The winning concepts have been recently launched and are available at major retail stores.¹

This percentage is the difference between what people claim they’re willing to pay for a product and what they actually would pay for it. Source: Jacquemet, N., Joule, R. V., Luchini, S., & Shogren, J. F. (2011). Do people always pay less than they say? Tested laboratory experiments with IV and HG values. Journal of Public Economic Theory, 13(5), 857–882.