Market Research: Foundations to Practice · Concept and Product Testing
Diagnostic Questions Beyond Purchase Intent
A purchase intent score alone tells you whether a concept works, but not why, or what to fix if it doesn't. This chapter covers the diagnostic questions that make concept testing actually actionable.
A purchase intent score alone tells a team whether a concept is likely to succeed, but it provides essentially no diagnostic information about why a concept scored the way it did, or specifically what to adjust if the score wasn't strong enough to move forward with, which is why well-designed concept tests generally include diagnostic questions alongside the core purchase intent measure, not purchase intent in isolation.
Key Takeaways
- Purchase intent alone tells you whether a concept works but provides no diagnostic information about why, or what to fix if it doesn't.
- Common diagnostics measure uniqueness, relevance, believability, and clarity, each explaining a disappointing score in a distinct way.
- Different diagnostic patterns call for different fixes: a clarity problem needs better communication, while a relevance problem may need a different product idea.
- A brief open-ended follow-up complements structured diagnostics by surfacing specific reasoning a researcher may not have anticipated.