Conceptual profiling

Figure 4.4 Conceptual profile of Cadbury s Boumville Deeply Dark Chocolate.

Figure 4.5 Representation of consumers responses under three conditions considered in the first two dimension for (a) liking profiles, (b) emotional conceptual profiles, (c) abstract/ functional conceptual profiles.

Expedited procedures for conceptual profiling of brands, products and packaging... 

This chapter begins by considering the role of reward in new product success or failure. It then explores the nature of concepts, the role played by conceptualisation in delivering reward and the importance of aligning the conceptual profiles of product and brand (brand-product consonance) to achieve fit-to-brand (or fit-to-concept). The relevance of fit-to-brand and its impact on reward is discussed. 

An explanation as to why reward and fit-to-brand cannot (and should not) be measured directly is provided. A derived index of fit-to-brand, obtained by superimposing brand and product conceptual profiles, is proposed as an alternative. 

The expedited procedures described herein provide a practical and cost effective means of conceptual profiling and consequently for obtaining a derived index of fit-to-brand, within the context of routine new product development. 

The next sections of this chapter explore concepts, conceptualisation and conceptual profiling. This is then used as the basis for developing the idea of a derived index of fit-to-brand, which is illustrated using a number of case studies. 

Emotion profiling versus conceptual profiling - some theoretical considerations... 

The practical considerations involved in conceptual profiling and the associated analysis tools developed by the author and his colleagues at MMR Research Worldwide are described in detail in a suite of recent, peer-reviewed scientific publications (Thomson, et al, 2010 Crocker and Thomson, 2014 Thomson and Crocker, 2014). 

For practical purposes, there are two aspects to conceptual profiling fhat need to be considered separately concept description and quantification of degree of conceptual association. 

The object of conceptual profiling is to access, identify and quantify the conceptualisations that we associate with products, branding and packaging, including those less-than-obvious concepts that are held deep within the conceptual architecture of the mind (sometimes below the level of conscious awareness), and also those concepts that might seem somewhat counter-intuitive if we were to stop and think about them too much ... 

With conceptual profiling, the measurement processes must be able to accommodate the possibility of apparent counter-intuitiveness. As described previously (Section 5.6.1), milk chocolate is often thought of as a comfort food and trustworthiness is an important conceptualisation that is associated with comforting (Thomson et al, 2010), yet it would be utterly counter-intuitive to invite respondents to taste an unbranded sample of milk chocolate and rate it for trustworthiness on an external scale. In other words, direct scaling usually invokes rational thought processing. 

The application of BWS to conceptual profiling and the associated data analysis procedures are described in detail by Thomson et al. (2010) and by Thomson and Crocker (2014). Subsequent to this, we have developed a variant of BWS where the best-worst exercise described above is augmented by a calibration best-worst exercise in which the roles of the conceptual terms and objects are reversed. Referred to as 2-way best-worst scaling, this procedure represents a major methodological advancement because it overcomes the problem of relativism in BWS, thereby faciUtating... 

It is our view that 2-way BWS, using a bespoke, category-specific conceptual lexicon, is the most sensitive and precise tool available currently for conceptual profiling and, given the option, we would choose this approach in preference to all others in most circumstances. 

Figure 5.4 Bullseye conceptual profiling interface (colonred on computer screen). ...

MMR has used Bullseye widely over the past few years as part of its Brandphonics process. Whilst it is undoubtedly less discriminatory than 2-way BWS, with thoughtful application it is sufficiently discriminatory for many purposes and is highly compatible with the requirement for speed. We often combine Bullseye and BWS within a single study, where the former is used for conceptual profiling of brands and the latter for conceptual profiling of unbranded products where the conceptual content is less accessible. These data are then used to obtain a derived index of fit-to-brand. Various applications of Bullseye are presented in Case Studies 2 and 3. 

Three case studies are presented in this section. The first two studies desalbe the application of conceptual profiling to High Street pharmacy retailer brands and to the development of a derived index of fit-to-brand in the Single Malt Scotch Whisky category. The third study explores the relationship between our derived index of fit-to-brand and new product sales volumes. 

Case Study 1 - Expedited conceptual profiling of three... 

Figure 5.5 Conceptual profiles of 3 UK High Street pharmacy/healthcare retailers.

Figure 5.6 Segmentation of the conceptual profile of Retailer 1 to reveal four underlying...

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