office interior design questionnaire for clients

welcome to decision analyst's insider series webinar on "product testing in the real world with ihuts." my name is cristi allen, i'm the marketing director at decision analyst and a moderator today. before i introduce our presenters i have a few notes for everyone, in the handouts section there is a copy of today's presentation

along with some relevant white papers and case studies. also please feel free to ask any questions by typing in the chat box. we will attempt to answer as many questions as we can at the end of the presentation. if we don't answer your question during the webinar someone will respond to your question within a day or two. today's presenters are; stan hazen,

he's the chief strategy officer. stan has conducted product testing for wide variety products including snacks, canned foods, microwavable meals, coffee, and shoes. and felicia, executive vice president. felicia's product testing experience includes categories like foods and beverages, health and beauty tools, and home decor. and with that i

will hand the presentation over to stan. thanks cristi and thanks to everybody who's joined us today, we're happy you're here. our subject today, product testing is an important type of marketing research that probably isn't done nearly as much as it should be. here's what we'll cover today. some general thoughts about product testing;

some uses designs, and systems; thoughts about a gold standard approach or systems product testing; some elements to think about when conducting tests; some typical questions asked; and some examples of product test studies. first, i want to talk just a little about the basic idea of testing products. we might not think about it much but product

testing is something that people do naturally and that we do all the time. we're testing products when we try a new restaurant or a new brand of toothpaste. when we try something we've never done before like streaming music or using uber for the first time or when we try on clothes in a store or when we take a car for a test drive. we check out

product reviews on amazon before buying something, which are reviews by other people who in a sense have tested the product for us. and people are always looking for something they like or something they feel will improve their quality of life in some way. product testing and marketing research is doing the same thing but on

a larger scale and for businesses. it's trying to discover or develop something that many people like or that many people feel will improve their quality of life in some way and that many people will buy. when we think about product testing and marketing research some different types of research might come to mind. maybe early stage product

testing or r&d testing, maybe qualitative ethnography research for researchers observe people in their homes as they use products. but our focus today is on quantitative product testing. product testing that uses larger sample sizes and uses control designs and methods with the purpose of being predictive and projectable. it's researched for making

final product decisions like the decision to change a product or not or to introduce a new product or not. considering everything that product testing can do to help a company be successful it might be the most valuable research many companies can ever do. it can help improve an existing product or give a new product its best chance to

succeed and it's the best way there is to develop a truly superior product. if you have the best product in your category you have some great advantages it can help increase brand share and revenue. it can make all of your marketing efforts more effective and it might allow you to sell your product at a premium price. on the other hand if you

don't test and improve your products, at some point you're likely to lose market share either to companies that are testing their products or to new and better products coming into the market. now felicia will take us through the next part. thank you stan. i'm going to spend the next few minutes talking about different uses of product tests. a

different, a few different types of product test designs, and some various features of product testing systems. first, product tests, typically are used to answer a variety of questions like; 'is the product strong enough for likely success in the marketplace?' 'is it good the way it is? or does it need improvement? and how can the product be

improved? other things like if we're working on a new formulation, or a reduced cost formula for a product. how does it perform? and how does it perform compared to the current product? can consumers even tell a difference between the two? and if they can which one is preferred? sometimes we use product testing in conjunction with a product

concept, and we use that to determine how well a product will perform when the concept is shown first. and what about times when we use product testing in conjunction with the volumetric forecasting. that's a good way also to determine a product's likelihood for success. we can also determine how a test product or a current product can perform

in comparison to its key competitors. so there are a lot of ways to use product testing. in addition, to these we can do things like, assess a products performance in terms of its shelf-life. how long does it actually last or stay fresh on the shelf? how easy is it to use? or what is the consumers overall experience with the product. we can look at various

aspects of package design within the context of a product test. so does it function properly? is the design appealing and attractive to consumers who are using or potentially buying the product? and what are some reasons for a low repeat purchase rate? if we notice that a product is on the market, but it doesn't seem to be bought as often as we

would like, we can do some investigating to determine the reasons for that. there are all types of products that can be tested through a traditional product testing system. we really tend to think most about consumer packaged goods products like foods and beverages or maybe health and beauty products, but you can, as i said, really test a wide variety

of things with a product testing system. and decision analyst has, in fact, over the years tested many different types of products like cleaning supplies, lawn and garden products, electronics, toys, appliances, a whole range of things as you can see here. and we've even done things like test a restaurant design like a redesign of the interior or the

dining area. we have assessed new hotel room layouts and decor and amenities for hotels. so again it can be applied, these kind of procedures, can be applied in many different product areas. let's talk for a minute about three main types of product testing designs that are shown here. we'll start first with a monadic product testing design. this is one where

consumers test one product at a time. they're only focused on a singular product as indicated by the term monadic or mono, which is the root word there. it has several advantages. first, it comes the closest to a real-life situation as people, we use products one at a time. we tend not to, for example, drink a certain beverage and compare it to its

competitor. when we choose a beverage that's the one we're drinking at the moment. and so testing a product, just one product is really representative of what happens in real life. also since only one product is being tested in this case there really are no interaction effects that could affect the the ratings or bias the results in any way because

again the the participant or the respondent is focused on just this one product. so it provides us with the cleanest measurement of response or evaluation of that product. it also allows us to compare these results to other products that have been tested in the same way. and this really makes it the best design for

developing norms and giving us the ability to compare to other products and to compare to norms. another design which is sequential monadic is similar but different from the monadic design. it's similar in that a respondent would be asked to try and evaluate one product and do that thoroughly before moving on to trying and evaluating a second

product. this also comes close to a real-life situation. although, again we're doing one product at a time, but really its key advantages are that it is lower in cost to the monadic design because we're asking fewer people to participate in the test, having them do two or more products at a time it brings the cost down. it also can help us facilitate a

line of questioning toward the end of the study, where we're asking them for comparisons. so a preference rating, if you will and can provide us with kind of a backup or a tiebreaker data for the monadic parts of the rating. we can compare them at the end and understand which one people liked better, which of the two products. there are some

disadvantages though, and really the primary disadvantage is that testing multiple products with a single consumer can lead to two different types of effects. first of all we have an interaction effect, which is when a consumer experiences one product, that can skew their perceptions of the other product and affect the way they rate the

second product. and then the other one the suppression effect happens when a respondent knows that they're going to be testing multiple products. so they kind of hold back or suppress their ratings of the first product, in order to leave room for higher ratings on the second one should they feel that that one deserves higher ratings. so all of the ratings

in a design like this tend to be a little bit lower on average then they might be in the case of a monadic test. now, we do some things to control for this. primarily rotating the order or randomizing the order in which we have people rate products, but still these effects are in place. now with all of that said. these do limit the ability for

us to develop norms for product tests in this situation. however, this is still a very valid and very useful form of product testing and we apply it in certain situations very successfully. the third design we wanted to talk about is paired comparison. this is a simpler design more straightforward design. it is a simple way for us to have people try

more than one product and just give us a their overall preference. really the key advantage here is face validity again it's a simple straightforward test. it's very easy to understand. the person who's actually testing the products finds it easy to understand what they're doing, but more importantly the people who are receiving the results, the data, also can

easily understand it. and for that reason this approach is often used when there's a comparison being conducted for the, because of a claims test that might be being considered or be in place and also anything that is going to be used in a legal case, especially if it's going to go to court, or if it's expected to go to court. a paired comparison is a nice

clean design to use. it's also very sensitive and by that i mean when a single person is evaluating two different products, we can have very high level of confidence that if they prefer one or the other, or if we detect differences in the data, that those differences are real. it also tends to cost less than the other methodologies

because the survey itself is relatively short and relatively simple. it requires less analytics, primarily or less analysis and less programming things like that. and it's just a more efficient way to do things. and speaking of efficiency, if these are products that are going to be shipped to someone's home or some other location,

there are a lot more efficiencies in packaging and shipping products, again because we have fewer respondents in this design, and so, therefore, just fewer packages are being put together and shipped out to less postage costs, less packing cost and so on. the primary disadvantages of this approach are that we're really only able

to identify relative differences between the products that are being tested because it is, they are kind of being tested in isolation, there's no good way to develop norms for this type of approach. and so again the differences that we detect are just relative to one another and we also are only able to determine or guess, i should say, we're

not able to determine how good or bad each product really is, but again just those relative differences. so let's talk about some testing environments. i've kind of alluded to this, but products can be tested in a number of different environments including in people's homes or on work sites, in an office, for

example. we can test products on site and an example of that might be in a restaurant, if we're testing menu items we can recruit people to a central location and have the product shipped to and served or test it out in a central location like a research facility. the best place to test a product is really whatever its natural environment or its

typical usage environment would be. so we do that so that the product is used when, where, and how people would typically use it and by the people who would typically be using it. the idea is to get a real-world measurement or real-world assessment of products in there again in their natural setting and over a period of time, so that people have an

opportunity to use the product more than once over the course of some number of days or weeks or even months. for the in-home or in office type of product testing oftentimes we'll recruit people online to participate in these tests and the reason for that online recruiting as opposed to central location, for example, is that it gives us

a more representative sample. we can recruit from a much broader geographic area. give, giving us a better representation of the population and this is especially useful sometimes when we've got a low incidence category, people who are a little more difficult to find and we can again go out to a broader area to find the people. in

decision-making, about test locations there are some key factors to consider and i've spoken about some of these already but we also want to consider things like feasibility or cost of actually getting the product itself. do we need to buy the product from retail? or will we be receiving or shipping products from a manufacturer? and there

are certain costs involved obviously in doing that, so we need to kind of think through those issues before deciding exactly where and how to test. and along those same lines we've got packaging and you know other types of shipping costs that come into play here. another important issue is whether or not the product needs to be prepared in

some way, to be served, or to be to administer the test. for example, if it's a food product that needs to be cooked, we want to ensure that we have very tight control on how that's being prepared and how it's being served, so that the results are not biased. so those are the types of things we want to consider in terms of deciding where and

how to test the product. the key really is to make sure we have standardization in place. the greatest value in any product testing system is various types of standardization. again we want to make sure that every test is conducted in exactly the same way. so that every test, so that every product is tested in the same way by the same

types of people or the right types of people. we want to make sure that they're packaged in the same way, prepared in the same way and that we're using the same questionnaire, same sampling plan, and analytical methods. again all in the name of standardizing and being able to compare results from one test to the next. we also feel it's important to have

not only predictive measures but some diagnostic measures in place in a good product test. and this helps us to understand not just whether or not a product is good or if it's bad but how good or bad is it and what specifically is good or bad about it. and even more importantly, we're able to detect through some of these diagnostics that we gather,

what can be improved, so again; is it good or bad? how good or bad? is it, but most importantly, what can we do to improve it, so that the products chances for success are elevated. and ideally a standardized product testing system would give us the ability to utilize norms, and even better, to develop our own customized norms for that particular

product category or the brand or that specific product line. accurately measuring the results again of how good or bad a product is is important and in comparison to norms it gives us an even better chance for success. so over time with a standardized system like this it becomes even more valuable as we use it over and over again and as you and your

partners get better at interpreting the results from these studies chances for success begin to increase. and at this point i'm going to hand it back to stan to talk with us a little bit more about ideal testing methods. thanks felicia. well, i'm going to talk just a bit first here about what i consider to be a gold standard or a best practice approach to

product testing. and i think felicia's covered a lot of this, but i think if we put it all together into a kind of an ideal approach, i think the ideal approach would have five key elements ideal approach to product testing. first, it's based on in-home testing. so it's as close as possible to real-world usage second, it's a monadic design, it uses a

monadic design, so provides clean consistent comparable measures. third, it's a standardized system. again for consistency, comparability which the reasons for that consistency and comparability, the desire for that, is that we can develop norms. it's we can learn from it compared to it over time, learn from it over time. so it needn't be

a system that has a database of test results that we can develop norms and action standards from. and finally fifth, its diagnostic. so as felicia said, you not only know how good a product is but you also know what changes or improvements are needed to make it better. this type of product testing system with these kind of

characteristics would provide the most accurate and actionable results possible and would become more and more meaningful and valuable over time. now we'll look at some of the things you need to think about when conducting home use tests. first, who do you test among? product testing is usually conducted among a representative sample

of category users, that is people who currently use that type of product. an exception might be if you're testing a brand new type of product where there are no current users, in which case you might test among a general population sample, or you might conduct a concept to home use tests where consumers are first screened for interest in concept then

given product to test in home. if you're considering a potential change to an established current product with a high brand share in its category it's important to include a sizable sample of the current brand users. you have to be very cautious about making changes to an established product to make sure you don't alienate those current users

because that is the the core of your business, the base of your business. after a current product with a low brand share opinions of non users become more important because that's where your opportunity for growth is. also, always remember that respondent groups for different products being tested or different test cells should be matched

or equal in a couple of key demographic or usage variables, to help assure that any differences in product ratings are real differences, not due to differences in the sample. in thinking about sample size, typical sample size from an monadic product test is 150 to 200 completes per test product. the actual sample size you choose could depend on some other things,

for example, what your budget is if you need to read segments within the total or how big of a risk is involved in whatever product decisions you might be making. when thinking about sample size you'll also need to think about how much you need to over recruit because as we know not everybody you recriut and give products to will complete the test. you

could need to over recruit by as little as 15% or maybe up to 40% or even more. and that would depend on factors like the type of product being tested, the difficulty or length of the test, and what kind of completion rates you've seen in previous tests. and here are some issues or questions to think about regarding the products that will be

tested, for example, how much product will each respondent get? and how much time will they have to use it? how much extra product is needed to cover over recruitment? how much extra to cover possible damage in shipment when shipping to the supplier? will the client be shipping product to the supplier or will the supplier need to purchase

product in stores for the test? are the test products the same age? another big question is, will the product test be unbranded or branded? the unbranded or blind test provides the cleanest measure of product performance, but brand does affect perceptions and purchase in the real world and a branded test is sometimes best. whether a test is

unbranded or branded will affect a number of issues related to packaging and labels. for example, how will the product be packaged? will any product need to be repackaged? and if generic packaging or labels are used, what information needs to be on it. few other things to think about, how will you get the products to the test participants?

priority mail? overnight delivery? will it be handed out in central location? will there be any special packaging or shipping needs? you need to be sure to include clear instructions for the test and the materials you send participants. and even though the product tests responses will likely be collected online, you might want to include a

printed questionnaire for the respondent to use for notes or to record their responses during the test. these next slides are about some typical questions asked in product tests. first, you know just touching on objectives, because objectives determine the types of questions asked. some of the key objectives of product test typically

include include; first, assessing the overall performance of the product, so we want to know how good is it. is it optimized as good as it can be or as good as it needs to be. another key objective is to understand what's good and what's not good about the product. what are its strengths and weaknesses? what improvements or changes are needed?

or how much of a change is needed. some typical overall questions that are usually included, or might be included, in product tests, one key measure that is typically included is the overall rating question, just the overall rating of the product. usually this is will use a scale with a lot of points so that you can measure relatively small

differences between the products. for example, it might be an 11-point, or zero to ten scale. another typical overall type measure is purchase intent, sometimes with a separate question about expected purchase frequency also asked. a rating on value is another measuring measure that's often used. and these types of measures, these overall measures

are what key norms and action standards are usually based on. diagnostic scale ratings tell us where a product performs well and where it needs improvement. just about, just about right ratings or jar ratings as they're sometimes called are one type of diagnostic scale rating and are critical for understanding how to improve a product. these might be five

point or three point scales with the midpoint being 'just right' or 'about right' scales like 'too sweet', 'about right' or 'not sweet enough'. the goal is to achieve high scores for about right and for the two ends of the scale to be balanced decision analyst uses a mathematical model in analyzing these types of measures to identify what changes will

improve the products overall rating and the degree of change needed. in addition to the about right scales and the attributes that we measure with those there are usually some other attributes rated on an excellent to pour type of scale, just different types of attribute, for example, attributes like quality freshness or appearance. it's important

to be sure you know the critical variables for the product category and that you've covered them in the test and this might require some upfront qualitative work to make sure that we do know those. open-end diagnostics are questions are also a valuable diagnostic questions in products. a typical open end in a product test is 'what do you

like or like most about the product?' this gets at what's products greatest strengths are or what's most appealing to consumers and this can be very useful in advertising or other marketing communication. other typical open ends might include: 'what do you dislike about the product? or what changes or improvements would you

suggest? there are also some other types of questions that might be included in products tests that can provide other learning. for example, who in your household would use the product? and for what uses or occasions would it be used? what type of store would you expect to find it in? or in what section? or department of the store would you expect

to find it? would it replace another product that you're currently using? and if so what product would it replace? and did you experience any difficulty or problems using the product? and you might also want to include a few questions about the package or label to get some extra learning about that. in this last section we'll look at a few examples of

types of products decision analyst has tested and felicia's mentioned some of those but just a few more specific examples. over the years we've conducted hundreds of home use product tests and tested thousands of individual products. here are a few in a few categories in food and beverage, we've tested products such as chips, salsa,

coffee creamer, frozen meals, fruit cups, beef jerky, and literally maybe a hundred other types of products. health and beauty products like shampoo, sore throat spray, dental floss, lipstick, deordorant, pain relief cream. and then some different types of products, different categories like, cat litter, laundry detergent, lawn insect control, espresso

machines, tv shows, and even ink cartridges. and here are just three examples of some specific product tests we conducted and and what resulted from those tests. in one we tested a popular british cream spread to explore acceptance in the u.s. we found that the u.s. users wanted the product

to be sweeter, they didn't like the name and they would use it for some different uses than british users. the client did reformulate the product to make it sweeter and changed the name and went forward with introducing it in the u.s. in another study we tested five new accessories for a child carrier product that the child carrier brand was

considering adding to its product line. we identified two accessories to add to the line that would attract new customers to the brand. we also identified in the course of the research some new trends in the category which led to improvements in the company's entire product line. the third example was a concept to home use test for a new

dog food, where we tested three different piece sizes in the product test. the product concept performs strongly and we found in the product test that sales would be optimized if two piece sizes were offered. and the product was introduced available in those two piece sizes. and just to finish up here, here are there are a few main ideas i'd like

to leave you with. first are the five key elements that we talked about for what i consider a best practice product testing system. those are that it uses in home testing, it uses a monadic test design, it's a standardized system, it uses a database of test results for developing norms and action standards, and it's diagnostic. and regarding product testing

in general remember that product testing is an important and valuable type of marketing research. many companies don't do any product testing, but those who do and who do it well, can realize tremendous advantages and opportunities. and to do product testing well it takes commitment at a good system and a good research partner.

and now we will see if we have any questions and try to answer as many of those as we can. felicia. yes, some questions have, in fact, come in and so we're appreciative of those. stan, the first question that i'm seeing that maybe you would like to tackle is; 'can you share more about the hotel room test that you mentioned

earlier?' yeah, i think that's one where you and i have had some experience, involved with. my experience was a hotel chain that was undergoing a remodeling, renovating the entire brand and in their hotels. they were testing some different prototype room designs and we just recruit people or bring people in to observe those

walkthrough look at them see everything rate them and answer questions about them. so it was really more qualitative than quantitative but it was bringing them in have them experience the room and rate it and so very much a product test. right, yeah, and my experience was very similar a different hotel company but it was, you know, as we all know

interior design trends are constantly changing and so this was an update for this hotel chain as well and they were, i think they had us go in and take some people through prototype rooms that were set up on the property, evaluate the layout of the room, evaluate the decor that was in the room, certain other amenities that had to do with that room

in particular as well as the property. so very interesting type of what we would call a product i wouldn't typically think of when in terms of product testing. yeah, and we've talked i think there's a way to do that maybe in a more product test way in a quantitative way would be to have several prototype rooms in a hotel or a room in different hotels

different locations and just have guests stay in those and rate those and you know kind of over time over a fairly short period of time get some quantitative, and some follow-up qualitative reactions, to those rooms but actually experience staying in the room. i think that could be a step above the product testing where they're just

walking in and looking at it. exactly that would be, i guess a truer product test in the sense of the term where they've actually used it over at least one night. okay here's another question 'you talked a lot about cpg or consumer packaged goods but how would you test durables like a car or a large appliance?' i'll take a stab at this at first and we

have actually tested large durables and the answer is the same basic testing principles and testing systems work but when you're talking about something like a washing machine, for example, which we have done, obviously you're not packing it up and shipping it from our office space here. there's a lot more involved just from a logistics standpoint and so

we are able to recruit respondents to allow us to come into their homes remove the washing machine that they own, install a test product, and we have them use it, and of course we had professionals go in and do the installation, but they have, we had them used the product over the course of several months. and so during that, let's

say it was a three month timeframe, the families used the washing machine just as they always would their own, use whatever kinds of detergent they would use, and other things. and there were several touch points along the way to ask them about their experience with the product, were they having any problems with it, you know, in the event that they

did have any kind of a problem that required intervention, if you will, you know, we would have to send out a maintenance person or a tech to diagnose what was going on. so anyway this went on over the course of several months and like i said we were able to use the same types of questionnaires, the same types of systems, but

it's just that the product itself is logistically different we have to deal with it. we did in fact remove, the test machine and return it to the manufacturer at the end of the test and bring in the respondents' machine that they own, which probably was disappointing. well the manufacturer hopes it was disappointing. right, right but in

that type of research there would be a very healthy incentive involved as well because the trouble that it is for people to do that and the length of time that you're asking them to participate and so on but valuable research. and in terms of cars, that was the other example given here, i know that we do a lot of car clinics,. so in this case it's not

like having a person try out the car for themselves for a week, but you bring people into a central location where you've got several new models, for example, and this can incorporate both quantitative and qualitative at the same time. so we have people go through and evaluate several new models for everything you'd want to know about the

car and then you can take some of them off to the side and have a focus group or a little one-on-one discussion. so that that's a different type of product testing that falls into this this category. yes, definitely, it is still product testing and very effective. so here's another question; 'what are the factors in your final go or no-go

recommendation and how do you provide that guidance with confidence?' well, i first, you know, assuming you have a good norm, normative, or action standard system that you've done testing of your own and you know what makes a good product or what a good benchmark or action standard point is to determine a successful product for you, well as that's the big

measure right there, is that overall measure of the product and compared to your action standard. and if there's a clear, if a product tests well above where you're marked for likely to succeed product is you can be very, very confident that that is going to be a successful product, unless there's strange factors at play along the way it

should be. if it's very close then you look at other things for sure if it's slightly below what your action standard is, you'd certainly be looking at or how could it be improved to what degree could it be improved or how much do we think it could be improved, and in what areas. you'd be looking at all of that anyway, but you know, sometimes the result

can be very clear good or bad and sometimes it's more often it's probably a close call and you're looking at the the diagnostics to understand; 'can we tweak this?' 'can we do something to make it more successful?' 'give it a better chance?' and then go forward with it. i think another thing is, you might need to go back tweak reformulate add or do

something different on the product and then test it again, to make sure that you have improved it and it has reached an action standard to go forward. yeah, that's a good point and i guess the only other thing i would add is, you know, a true final go or no-go decision probably is not going to be made just based on the product test results. there are many

other factors that need to be considered and that for us is back on the client side. we love to consult with our clients, but ultimately there could be some operational issues or some cost structure issues that help them with that final decision, but to your point stan, those action standards are extremely helpful in a test like this.

and, therefore, you need a great systems question on databasing here, this one says; 'what are your thoughts on databasing new product scores versus line extensions scores?' this is really an excellent question. i think if i'm understanding it properly, this is really a question about established brands and a product test

for a line extension or maybe a new flavor or some new iteration of the product as compared to a totally new product that may not exist in the market maybe it's a new new up-and-coming category. or it could be a new product for that brand. true, moving into a different category for that brand. right, so i think again, if we're

understanding the question properly, this is definitely an excellent point, in that the those are two different things in a lot of ways. so we would want to compare two different sets of norms hopefully customized norms but even general norms do exist for totally new products versus established brands and we want to make sure that we keep those kinds of things

separate or analyze them a little bit differently because for a brand new product that hasn't really existed in the market, the scores may or may not tend to be lower in comparison to an established brand, especially if it's a brand that, you know, already has a great reputation what we could experience some different scores that

way. right, i think ultimately, ideally you would eventually develop enough of a base of product testing for your brand, your category that you would, you would know that here's that if there's a difference between a line extension kind of action standard and a new product action standard you would know what those differences are for your brand, for

your category, but there very well could be. i think that that certainly is a good question, but over the long run i think developing your own kind of action standards and norms for those is the best approach. all right, we have time probably for a couple more questions, an interesting one here, 'you mentioned earlier that you've

tested tv shows, how do you go about testing tv shows?' well, in the past it may have been that you would send somebody a dvd to watch and test at home and then evaluate after watching but now it's just it's done within the survey. there's an encrypted video embedded within the survey. you go into the survey, you click

start, and in the tv show plays right on your screen within your survey. there's some other things that we do, besides the encrypting embedding and encrypting to help ensure security of the content but it can be done and it works well. yeah, so oftentimes these are like pilots for new shows that haven't been out and so that's part of the importance of the

encrypting and a security that we use. so yeah, that's another interesting quote-unquote product category that you're not going to go buy at the store necessarily. and easier today than it was several years ago. absolutely, we don't have any shipping costs involved or ups and things like that. okay, i think we're getting close on time but we have

time for one more question and this one i think is kind of fun; 'how do you recommend testing products with kids? do these same methods work or do you have to make changes?' right, yeah, we, i've actually been involved in, we as company have been involved in quite a bit of testing with kids and it works well. we have to go through the mom, typically.

so, where that mom is the panel member, we recruit the mom, we kind of qualify her on her age of kids, or whatever the kid needs to be using as well, but then we place the product. the mom is the one who knows the instructions for the test, but they serve the product, or they have the kid use the product or

or whatever and then asks the questions and record those and then come back and do the survey online to give us the kids responses. but, yeah it works well and you know i think it works better than most other ways of trying to get responses from kids. it's in their home, they're talking to their mom, they're going to be comfortable using it. they're

going to be comfortable saying whether they like it or not. sometimes some scale differences, maybe fewer questions, simpler questions, if the kids are very young, but even kids up nine or ten years old or over or above that can answer most questions very well. and i like when you know some some of our tests involve asking the mom to answer the questions

but also having the child, again depending on the age and the situation, but we can do that so that we get mom's opinion about the product but what might be even more important to the company is the kids opinion. because we all know that, you know, kids are not out there necessarily earning their own money that they spend, but they have a

lot of influence over the spending that does occur. so being able to see the differences between the child's opinion and reactions to the product compared to the parent can be very interesting and extremely useful. yeah, and in those cases and these you know testing something with kids you all are also asking questions of the parent

or the mom because the kids may love something but the mom says no i would never buy that. so, i mean you you're getting responses from both sides for sure. right, i think it really helps those companies to understand the dynamic between the kid and the parent and you know where can we take this product it does have potential or

doesn't it. right, so i think we are out of time and we've reached our time limit today. thank you all very much for joining us there may have been a few other questions, if we didn't get back or weren't able to address your questions as, cristi mentioned earlier we will attempt to get back to you within the next day or two with answers to

questions, and again we really appreciate you joining us today and we're going to hand it back to cristi. thank you. thank you stan and felicia for a wonderful presentation, and thank you to everyone for attending today's insider series webinar. if you have any questions please feel free to email stan or felicia. our next insider series webinar

will be wednesday, june 28. decision analysts' jerry thomas, and a consumer neuroscientist, a.t. grant, will be presenting on 'facial coding.' we hope you enjoyed today's session and are looking forward to seeing you for next month's webinar, webinar and have a wonderful rest of the day. thank you.

you

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