What are Consumer Studies?

Consumer studies offer insight into customer preferences through their responses, reactions, and feedback. Knowing how well people receive a product, its packaging, and your marketing campaign can help you understand their perception of your product before you launch it. Such valuable market research gives you the opportunity to improve on your design and messaging before investing too much time or money into something that will not sell. Consumer studies provide indispensable information that you can leverage to gain a competitive advantage and positively differentiate your products from alternatives on the market.

QIMA offers various types of consumer studies to assess personal response to consumer products such as overall preference, opinions on new product concepts, feedback concerning specific product attributes or documentation, and impressions about product packaging. We work collaboratively with your internal teams develop customized studies that provide actionable data without the bias that can be associated with in-house studies.

Consumer Studies Expertise

We can help you design and conduct the right study based on your needs. Our consumer study team helps with building surveys, hosting focus groups, and reaching out to panelists in our database to ask them to participate. As a leading provider of quality control, testing, inspection and audit services, QIMA has experience with a wide variety of products that can benefit from consumer studies:

Types of Consumer Studies

While different types of studies serve different purposes, they share some objectives. The study you choose needs to be able to reach people who are representative of your target audience. It must capture both positive and negative feedback without introducing bias. And it has to be cost effective. The makeup of your target audience as well as the nature of the product, packaging, or messaging that you want to evaluate will determine the type of market or product study that best suits your needs.

Consumer Studies Capabilities

Our experienced team can guide you in developing customized consumer research protocols and product-use studies targeted to meet your development challenges and to provide reliable feedback. QIMA’s consumer studies service supports:

• Home Use Studies – Panelists try out products on their own under normal conditions of use and then provide feedback on the outcome of the consumer test.
• Laboratory Location Tests – Participants evaluate products in a controlled environment where preparation and presentation can be carefully managed.
• Focus Groups – A moderator facilitates discussion among a small group of consumers to collect information about their experiences or expectations regarding a product or concept.
• Online Surveys – Companies collect responses from a large, targeted audience which are often used to narrow the focus of new product development or marketing strategies.

Not sure what type of testing you need? Reach out to our team of experts for guidance.

Home-use and laboratory location tests put a product in the hands of small, targeted groups of customers, which is especially useful for discovering unexpected challenges and sensory responses that are a matter of perception. Focus group studies evaluate reactions to a product, concept, marketing campaign, packaging appeal, etc. using open discussions which can elicit information that may not come out in other tests. In conjunction with each of these, consumer panel surveys can reach participants during the product concept stage to understand users’ preferences before product development or over time to find out how consumers’ attitudes change toward the products.

For broader audiences or market research studies that need to be completed quickly, online surveys may be the best choice. Careful attention must be paid to ensure that survey responses are valid, valuable, and representative of your actual audience.

Why QIMA for your Consumer Studies?

The QIMA Benefits

• A network of global labs providing tailor-made service to you and your suppliers
• Industry leading turnaround time for testing 
• Testing capabilities covering a wide range of consumer products including electrical & electronics, hardlines, softlines, toys and juvenile products
• Global technical support team with rich experience to help you build testing programs for your products
• Easy online and mobile booking and dashboard for managing orders and accessing data anywhere, any time