What is a venue survey (central location test)? Explaining the advantages and disadvantages and implementation steps

When making product development or packaging design decisions, there are cases where people are troubled by concerns such as ``judgments are made based on the intuition and experience of the person in charge, and it is not possible to explain the rationale or intent'' or ``the consumer's feelings and impressions are not visible.'' I think there is.

In order to create products and package designs that sell, it is important to perform objective evaluations based on consumer feedback and evidence, rather than thinking from a corporate perspective. One of the research methods that companies use to gather real consumer feedback is "venue research (central location testing)."

This article provides an overview of venue research, its advantages and disadvantages, and specific steps to take when conducting it.

Venue research useful for evaluating your own products

Venue research is a method of gathering research subjects in a specific location to find out their impressions and evaluations of products through interviews or questionnaires. It is also known as Central Location Test, or the acronym “CLT”.

Since you can see and use the product on the spot, it becomes easier to get honest opinions and opinions such as ``how the target person felt'' and ``what was their first impression?''

It is used for the following various purposes with the purpose of quantitatively and qualitatively evaluating consumers' real impressions and impressions of products.

▼Examples of using on-site surveys

• New product trials
• Food tasting
• Hypothesis verification for TV commercials and Promotion Materials
• Evaluation and comparison of package designs
• Evaluation of sales floor, etc.

Advantages of venue research

Venue surveys, which are useful for evaluating new products, package designs, and sales areas, allow you to directly communicate with your target audience and collect their opinions and impressions.

▼Advantages of venue research

• Maintain confidentiality of the investigation
• Observe the subject's real reactions
• You can dig deeper into opinions and reviews
• The research environment can be unified

During on-site surveys, companies can control information about the participants and the environment in which they are conducted, by restricting the use of smartphones, collecting materials and products on-site, and signing confidentiality agreements. Therefore, you can conduct highly confidential research that you want to prevent from leaking to outside parties, such as new products that have not yet been announced or packages that are in the prototype stage.

In addition, by having the subjects actually experience the product or shop in an environment that mimics a sales floor, you can observe their real reactions from their behavior, facial expressions, eye movements, etc. If you are unable to get a clear impression or evaluation, or if there are any answers that concern you, you can conduct interviews to dig deeper.

Furthermore, by standardizing the brightness of the venue and the product trial conditions, the survey can be conducted in the same environment, preventing problems with subjects having different perceptions.

Disadvantages of on-site surveys

When conducting a venue survey, there are things to keep in mind regarding advance preparation and the survey environment.

Disadvantages of on-site surveys

• It takes effort and cost
• The venue environment itself can be a source of bias.

Conducting a venue survey requires effort and cost, from recruiting and selecting subjects to arranging and setting up the venue. If display shelves and booths are created to resemble actual sales floors, additional manpower and costs may be required for transportation and setup.

Additionally, since the survey is conducted in an environment different from the actual store or the target person's home, there is a possibility that they may feel pressured or have preconceptions due to the atmosphere of the venue. In order to prevent fluctuations in the answers, it is necessary to create an environment in which the subjects can evaluate in a calm manner.

Steps to conduct a venue survey

To conduct an on-site survey smoothly and effectively, it is important to select the subjects and survey method according to the purpose, and to analyze the results after the survey. From here, we will explain the specific steps for conducting an on-site survey.

① Plan the venue survey

We will develop a plan for the on-site survey based on questions such as "Why are we conducting the on-site survey?" and "What information do we want to collect?"

Clarifying the purpose of the on-site survey and deciding on the specific survey items and methods will make it easier to set questionnaire questions and interview content.

Also, by determining the information collection method, schedule, and post-implementation analysis method at this stage, the internal flow will proceed smoothly.

▼Contents to be determined when planning

• Purpose of the project
• Survey items/methods
• The specific content and scope of information you wish to collect
• Implementation period
• Venue size and location
• Attributes and number of target people
• How to analyze the collected results
• budget etc.

② Recruit survey subjects

There are two main ways to recruit research subjects.

▼How to recruit survey subjects

Street catching reduces the effort required to select survey participants in advance and makes it easier to gather a variety of people with different attributes. However, there is a possibility that you may not be able to gather the number of survey participants you expect.

In the case of pre-recruitment, you can narrow down your target audience to people who meet certain conditions such as attributes and place of residence. However, because it takes a lot of effort to select monitors and respond to calls on the day of the event, there are cases where this is outsourced to a research company.

③ Conduct a survey

Venue We will arrange a venue suitable for the scale and content of the survey and conduct the survey on the target audience.

The accuracy of on-site surveys can be improved by having our own researchers observe the responses of the subjects and by combining quantitative and qualitative surveys.

▼How to conduct a venue survey

In quantitative research using questionnaires, depending on the content and format of the questions, subjects may be confused about the answer or may not be able to select the correct opinion or impression, which may affect the response rate and accuracy. In order to obtain honest opinions and impressions from the target audience, it is important to design questions that are easy to answer intuitively.

▼Points to consider when designing survey questions

• Make one question per question
• Avoid using technical terms or abstract phrases
• Ensure that your questions have a wide range of possible answers
• Conduct a test to check whether the flow of questions and answers are burdensome

④Collect and analyze the survey results

After conducting the on-site survey, the results of questionnaires and interviews collected from the subjects are compiled and analyzed.

Survey results can be collated using simple tabulation, cross tabulation, free description tabulation, etc. Combining different methods of collation allows results to be understood from a variety of perspectives, leading to the discovery of commonalities and new issues.

▼How survey results were compiled

The task of compiling and analyzing questionnaires that ask for written responses requires specialized knowledge and skills to quantify qualitative information. If it is difficult to handle this in-house, it is effective to use dedicated analysis tools or external services.

summary

In this article, we have explained the following about venue surveys:

• Purpose and usage examples of venue research
• Advantages and disadvantages of venue research
• Steps to conduct a venue survey

By having consumers actually experience the products and sales floor through on-site surveys, we can grasp consumers' real opinions, thoughts, impressions, etc. quantitatively and qualitatively.

To conduct a survey smoothly and effectively, it is important to select the subjects and survey method according to the purpose of the survey, and to design the survey questions to obtain accurate responses. After the survey, it is also essential to compile and analyze the responses and use them to improve product and package design.

However, while venue surveys have many benefits, they are labor-intensive and costly to conduct. Konica Minolta's `` EX Kansei'' is recommended as an alternative way to analyze consumer reactions while reducing labor and costs.

EX Kansei is able to quantitatively analyze eye movements and impressions based on unique image analysis technology and Kansei brain engineering. Compared to actually conducting a venue survey, the effort and cost can be reduced.

In addition to setting hypotheses before conducting a venue survey, it can be used when there is a limited period of time to decide on product development or package design.

For detailed service details, please check this document.