Whether you are a market research supplier with an impossible client deadline, an emerging food & beverage company with limited resources or a legacy brand tasked to do more with less, a PopUp CLT™ is as an agile consumer product testing solution for many typical market research challenges. When it comes to conducting food and beverage consumer taste tests, there are several quantitative methods to choose from including the PopUp CLT™ (consumer location testing), mall intercepts, in-home use testing (iHuts) and traditional CLTs (central location testing). Here are five guidelines that will help you determine if a PopUp CLT™ is right for your next project.

1. Budgets are tight.

The PopUp CLT provides lower costs for clients by taking advantage of today’s on-demand economy. Traditional fixed and variable costs such as staffing, leasing and incentives are much lower with a PopUp CLT™. On average, a PopUp CLT™ runs about half the costs of a traditional CLT. Unlike other methods, PopUp CLT pricing scales with larger sample sizes necessary for calculating significance statistics and therefore reliability of the results. Our inclusive project costs for all studies include a real-time results link on testing days, individual participant incentives, a topline report and basic significance testing where applicable.

2. Agility is a must.

The PopUp CLT™ was designed for consumer insights, R&D, sensory and marketing professionals that demand faster turnaround times than other methods can deliver. A typical PopUp CLT™ can execute about 100 completed taste tests in one day and can be in field the same week as project approval. The PopUp CLT™ provides real-time results from the field and has eliminated the need for a lengthy pre-recruitment process. We partner with retail property managers, city recreation and parks services, coffee shops, gyms and museums to name a few of our everyday consumer testing locations that can be activated within a few days notice.

3. Research objectives are simple.

Consider a PopUp CLT™ when the main objective is getting a quick read on priority product ratings. A PopUp CLT™ survey for one or more products generally covers overall liking, key flavor/appearance JARs, purchase interest, an open-ended question and any unique product questions that require extra thought to craft. To reach todays on the go consumers, surveys should be concise, uncomplicated and user friendly. This approach has ensured a drop-out rate of less than 5% and an open-ends response rate of over 80% with the PopUp CLT™.

4. Products do not need full kitchen preparations.

The PopUp CLT™ is ideal for fresh produce and packaged products that are ready to serve out of the box, bag, bottle or can. TasteMakers uses top of the line portable heating and cooling equipment for preparation and storage of temperature sensitive products such as ice cream, chocolate and hot soups. If the products you need consumer tested do not require oven time, lengthy preparations or a multi-step serving process, then a PopUp CLT™ can certainly save you time and money.

5. Incidence is 50% or more at targeted consumer testing locations.

Our PopUp CLT™ locations target consumers who have a naturally higher product incidence, acceptance or usage rate than the general population. For example, a protein drink may only have a 20% general population usage incidence, but if we conduct taste tests at a busy gym, that incidence could ump to 66% give or take. TasteMakers has accrued a vast network of consumer testing locations nationwide that can be immediately activated to reach targeted demographics for consumer product testing with millennials, health & fitness enthusiasts, moms, kids and the general population.

Next Steps

We are available to discuss your next consumer product testing initiative and quickly provide you with a project estimate. Although we don’t claim the PopUp CLT™ is the right call for all your consumer research needs, this innovative and agile methodology can be a terrific problem solver for some of your most challenging research objectives.

For more information and/or a project quote, please provide your contact information here: https://tastemakersresearch.com/tastemakers-business/