New Product Ideas & Concept Testing

Find the ideas worth investing in

AI is accelerating the front end of innovation, empowering brands to create new ideas, concepts, and features than ever before. But volume doesn’t guarantee value. Toluna helps you screen, sharpen, and validate what will truly connect with consumers. Combining AI-powered speed, first-party human truth, and research expertise, we help you move from what could work to what will win.

Innovate the Toluna way

From idea & concept screening to optimization and validation, we offer solutions that empower you to identify opportunities for innovation, optimize product ideas, and drive sales at the point of purchase.

Our approach is grounded in the latest industry thinking and empirical evidence, inspired by thought leaders such as Byron Sharp, the Ehrenburg-Bass Institute, and Clayton Christensen’s Jobs-to-be-Done theory. Drawing from these schools of thought, we have developed a framework for measuring product innovation success across three key criteria:

Commercial potential to drive (incremental) penetration, value and/or frequency.

Ability to address challenges across three dimensions: functional relevance, emotional resonance, and social acceptance.

Achieve top-of-mind consideration in key purchasing situations by aligning with and owning relevant category entry points.

Solutions that take you from idea to impact

Claims Test Instant

Screen claims, ideas, flavors, product attributes, and brand messages quickly and efficiently, powered by Toluna Synthetic Personas.

Explorer

Our mass-qual, AI-powered solution that delivers real-time insights guided by the strategic lens of our qualitative experts.

Concept Test Express (Toluna Start)

An automated concept testing solution that helps identify winning concepts that are distinctive, credible, and drive purchase intent.

Claims Test

Identify the strongest claims among your target audience and across markets with this holistic claims testing solution.

Concept Screen

Test and rank your product/service ideas.

Concept Test

Validate new product concepts and inform your go-to-market planning.

Tailored approaches for every stage of innovation

We’ve seen businesses innovating at scale across the products & services spectrum. Each innovation can be classified as one of three types:

CORE

Leveraging existing brands within familiar categories

Risk-reward profile: LOW

Key marketing challenges:

Generating sufficient incremental volume, value and/or frequency

Ensuring positive impact on brand health and/or customer satisfaction

STRETCH

Taking existing brands into unfamiliar terrain

Risk-reward profile: MEDIUM

Key marketing challenges:

Informing choice of key target audience and occasion/need profile

Predicting brand fit and adoption (penetration) rate

BREAKTHROUGH

Developing new propositions

Risk-reward profile: HIGH

Key marketing challenges:

White space discovery

Knowing when the time is right

Informing the go-to-market strategy

Your marketing challenges and insights needs will vary with the nature of your product innovation, as does the risk-reward profile. Our solutions – and the interpretation of results – are tailored to these various types of innovations.

Our approach

What makes our approach unique

Our approach to innovation research is distinct in many ways:

Broad-based validation with penetration measurement, behavioral simulation, and incremental growth/cannibalization analysis

Diagnostic insight into how well ideas solve functional, emotional, and social struggles

AI-powered optimization that strengthens GTM strategies and generates improved concepts based on results

Market-realistic testing through sophisticated idea presentation and assessment of category entry point fit

Actionable guidance through traffic-lighted analysis, intelligent benchmarking, and strategic recommendations

Ideas, Claims & Concepts

Find the ideas worth investing in

Innovate the Toluna way

Solutions that take you from idea to impact

Claims Test Instant

Explorer

Concept Test Express (Toluna Start)

Claims Test

Concept Screen

Concept Test

Tailored approaches for every stage of innovation

What makes our approach unique

Read more in our blog

Explorer demo video

The Gen Z and social media equation (Market Signal)

Asahi International drives engagement and purchase with stand-out pack redesign guided by AI-powered insights (Creative Explorer)

Ready to innovate?