Forecasting Successfully in Today's Ever-Changing Market

What has changed in today's market that makes it hard to predict the success of new product launches?

Today's dizzying market reality - highly fragmented categories, crowded shelves, abundance of `me too' products, an expanding arsenal of marketing communication tools, and ever-more discerning customers - makes developing a winning and sustainable product introduction even more challenging.

Strong but traditional product introductions no longer guarantee success. Marketers increasingly develop niche products, customized products, and continually strive to innovate with truly breakthrough products. Because most forecasting models are designed for mass-market products in established categories and are based on isolated norms, marketers are often making decisions without complete information. Accuracy and insight are severely compromised for both breakthrough products and targeted niche products.

Designor, Ipsos Novaction's forecasting tool, realistically replicates the consumer decision process and measures performance using multiple sophisticated models - all within a realistic competitive framework. Employing a competitively framed, multi-dimensional approach provides the versatility to address today's most salient product forecasting issues.

What makes forecasting niche and breakthrough products more difficult?

Purchase intent models tend to understate the success of breakthrough (unique) new products. As a result, many truly breakthrough products with real long term potential are prematurely abandoned in the early stages of the innovation process. In a similar manner, `me-too' products tend to score well on purchase intent, thus over-estimating their appeal. These products are often pushed through the new product pipeline despite a smaller chance for long-term sustainability. Analysis of our database has revealed that the signature of a successful product launch is superior delivery on uniqueness and relevance. In fact, relevance--not uniqueness--is more critical in identifying breakthrough products.. Similarly, evaluating uniqueness is paramount to avoid launching a "me-too" product.

How can these forecasting challenges be addressed?

Designor avoids these common forecasting problems by focusing on relevance and uniqueness which are then benchmarked to market leader performance to estimate trial potential.

Inclusion of relative preference and purchase opportunity models further emphasize our competitive focus and serve to refine trial potential estimates for even greater accuracy.

Key measures are evaluated against the relevant alternative brands (at the respondent-level). The relative performance is compared to Novaction's database of product tests. This realistic norm-free self calibration allows Designor to be transportable across segments, categories and countries. This is particularly beneficial for niche products where capturing performance against the correct competitive set among targeted samples is essential for assessing sales potential.

What about those product ideas which don't meet the hurdle or action standard?

There are many good ideas which don't pass the hurdles for the wrong reasons. Designor incorporates a robust diagnostic evaluation and comprehensive understanding of the product's sales potential. From functional product features to perceived emotional benefits, the test product is compared to market leaders to comprehensively assess its strengths and weaknesses. The result is powerful, actionable guidance and insight to help optimize your test initiative. By testing only among the relevant population, we achieve sample efficiency--and that can translate into substantial savings for the client.

Ultimately, we want to help our clients broaden their innovation possibilities and to compete more successfully in today's ever-changing marketplace.