It is a real place where participants (shoppers) make decisions, choose products/try services, compare and take products home to use/consume.
The participants: represent a target population and are randomly selected to represent your potential targets by age, ethnicity, LSM/Social Class, marital status, family stage, stratified by categories consumption and purchase channels.
The products: are mostly unbranded (but can be branded as well), and consumers pay them “virtually”.
Existing products (benchmarks) are used to put an initiative within its actual market context and competitors.
The tools follows 2 key moments of truth (when a product or service needs to deliver its promises): when it needs to win in store in order to be purchased, when it is actually used and needs to perform to be repurchased, up to when consumers become advocates and actively promote it.
INCREASING IN-MARKET SUCCESS OF YOUR INITIATIVES, BOOSTING CONSUMER RE-PURCHASE/RETENTION…
The “Path to purchase” is realistic – consumers do what they do in real life – look around, evaluate, compare then choose products in a natural setting different from the artificial “laboratory environment” of traditional central location or intercept research.
Product performance is evaluated in “real life” and assessed in use (at home)
Simulated Markets can be used to perform both experimental and non-experimental research.
Observation (passive) is used to understand which elements drive purchase, vs. questioning and “post rationalization”.
Cognitive biases (e.g. Context Effects: Compromise, Attraction, Similarity) can be bypassed.
Particularly suitable for Emerging markets – enabling to gain extensive market knowledge in a short time when market/category information is scarce or unreliable.
Enables to uncover opportunities arising both from the product and the sales mix.
Constant instantaneous access to naïve consumers to run “quick surveys”
Cost-efficient simultaneous evaluation of different initiatives or product categories.
Saves up to 60% over traditional sequential monadic testing.
Flexible/customizable setup: passive observation, self completion questionnaires (synchronous or asynchronous), assisted interviewing, multi-device recalls.
Actionable diagnostics, External and Ecological validity [*]
… almost endless other possibilities since it enables to correctly gauge the market reaction to any type of initiative.
[*] while External validity is the property of a measurement process that reflects the ability to generalize from a study results to circumstances beyond the research setting. Ecological validity of a study instead means that the methods, materials and setting of the study must approximate the real-world that is being examined.
that can be addressed with SIMULATED MARKETS
| TYPE OF PRODUCT OR SERVICE INITIATIVE | UNBRANDED simulated market |
BRANDED simulated market |
| BRAND ASSOCIATIONS | ✓ | |
| BRAND FIT | ✓ | |
| BRAND LOGO | ✓ | |
| CONSUMER NEEDS (PRODUCT BENEFITS AND THEIR RESONANCE) | ✓ | ✓ |
| TYPE OF FLAVOURS / FRAGRANCES | ✓ | ✓ |
| INGREDIENTS OR PRODUCT FEATURES MODIFICATIONS | ✓ | ✓ |
| PRODUCT LOYALTY | ✓ | |
| PACK DESIGN AND USABILITY | ✓ | ✓ |
| PACK SIZE | ✓ | ✓ |
| PATH TO PURCHASE | ✓ | ✓ |
| PRICE POSITIONING | ✓ | |
| PRODUCT EXPERIENCE (TEXTURE & SENSORY PROPERTIES) | ✓ | ✓ |
| PRODUCT/SERVICE CLAIMS | ✓ | ✓ |
| PRODUCT OVERALL PERCEIVED QUALITY | ✓ | |
| SEGMENTATION AND CORE TARGET IDENTIFICATION | ✓ | |
| SHOPPER/USER EXPERIENCE | ✓ | ✓ |
“To win today you need a culture and an environment where the unreasonable power of creativity thrives. Ideas are today’s currency, not strategy.” [Innovation Director]
“Simulated Markets enable to test many products in a short time, thus enhancing creative risk-taking and limiting its risk, and allowing to launch truly differentiating products which stand out from competition.” [Innovation Director – FMCG Company]
If you want to know more, download our examples and white papers