What Concept Testing is actually for
Most innovation pipelines have more concepts than they can fund. The development pipeline holds twenty, the NPD pipeline can support five, the commercial budget will back two or three. The question is not whether to filter; it is whether to filter against defensible consumer evidence or against internal preference and gut feel. Without the consumer-validated prioritisation, investment decisions get made on whichever concepts have the loudest internal champions, and the pipeline returns suffer from a selection bias the leadership team cannot defend in front of board, finance or investment committee scrutiny.
The structural problem is that most concept testing is either too qualitative (focus group reactions that cannot scale to investment decisions) or too generic (standard concept-testing methodologies built for FMCG broadly, not for food and drink specifically). Both fail at the same point: the decision-grade evidence needed to commit real investment is not what comes back. Either the sample size is too small, the metrics miss what actually matters for food and drink concepts, or the interpretation is too thin to support commercial recommendations.
Concept testing sits at the decision gate between concept development and commercial investment. Where idea screening casts a wide net, concept testing works with a smaller number of developed concepts – evaluating them with enough rigour to prioritise what goes forward, size the opportunity, and identify where further optimisation is needed before development investment is committed.
The methodology is quantitative and statistically robust, using food and drink-specific metrics rather than generic innovation measures. The output gives you a defensible basis for the decisions that matter: what to back, what to shelve, and what needs more work before it’s ready.
Concept appeal and distinctive ownership
Concept appeal
The broad consumer interest signal: does the concept attract attention, does it have intuitive appeal, does it land in the consumer’s frame quickly. The foundation metric, but never used alone because high appeal without distinctive ownership or occasion fit predicts commercial under-performance more often than it predicts success.
Distinctive ownership
Whether the concept owns a clear, distinctive space rather than competing on the same ground as everything else in the category. The metric that separates concepts that can build commercial defensibility from concepts that get absorbed into broader category noise. Particularly important for food and drink where category crowding limits the headroom for undifferentiated concepts.
Occasion fit and brand permission
Occasion fit
How well the concept fits the specific eating or drinking moment it is designed for: breakfast routines, lunch behaviours, snacking patterns, evening meals, social occasions. The metric that captures whether the concept is built around real food and drink behaviour rather than category-level abstraction. The lens generic FMCG concept testing consistently misses.
Brand permission
Whether the brand has credibility for the concept in the consumer’s mind, not as a generalised brand attribute but specifically in the occasion and proposition context the concept addresses. The metric that flags concepts that are good ideas attached to the wrong brand, and concepts that need brand work before they can be commercialised.
Purchase intent in context
Purchase intent measured against the actual purchase moment the concept addresses (the specific channel, the specific occasion, the specific consumption context), not as a generic willingness-to-buy question. The metric that correlates most reliably with commercial performance in food and drink, because purchase intent in context strips out the abstract favourability that inflates standard purchase intent scores.
Food and drink is all we do
We are not a generalist research agency that takes the occasional food brief. Food and drink is the only sector we work in. Our senior team knows specifically how concept testing correlates with commercial performance in this sector, which categories the standard FMCG metrics work for and which they miss, and where the interpretation needs to push against the surface scores. Generic concept testing can deliver scores; sector specialists can read what the scores predict for commercial decisions.
That focus is why we work with 11 of the UK’s top 40 food and drink brands.
Other ways to create and refine ideas
Concept Screening is one tool in the broader Create and Refine Ideas toolkit. Depending on the brief, one of these might be a better fit, or a stronger partner alongside the screening work.
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Concept Labs
Iterative concept development with consumers, structured to refine, sharpen and evolve a focused set of five to six priority concepts until they are ready to land as intended.
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Idea Testing (Idea Arena)
Tournament-style testing that pits your ideas against each other to surface the highest potential concepts before full development begins. Built around pairwise comparison rather than isolated scoring, the methodology reflects how consumers actually make choices – and produces a prioritised list of genuinely differentiated ideas worth investing in, not a homogenous set that all scored similarly.
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Hothouse
For when you need an urgent burst of creativity, clarity & objectivity. Let our experts take the brief off your hands, build the right stim & develop finished concepts.
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Creative Workshops
Expert-facilitated ideation workshop to unlock innovation.
View our case studies
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Pilgrim's Europe
Pilgrim's Europe needed a future-ready portfolio strategy balancing core business strength with breakthrough innovation. FIS Group delivered a bespoke Future Food process combining trend mapping, consumer insight, cross-functional ideation and rigorous validation, producing a fully evidenced long-term innovation roadmap.
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Pizza Express
Pizza Express needed trend-led hero dishes for their Christmas 2024 and September seasonal launches. FIS Group delivered a two-phase innovation sprint from concept ideation through kitchen development to full supplier briefing specifications, with all menu items reaching restaurants nationwide on schedule.
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Valeo Foods
Valeo Foods needed to unlock new category opportunities through genuine retailer collaboration rather than conventional supplier presentations. FIS Group facilitated co-creation workshops with Sainsbury's, M&S and Tesco, generating a pipeline of sweet and snacking concepts built inside Valeo's development framework and ready for prototype presentation within months.
FAQs
Intent and methodology. Concept Labs is iterative development: concepts arrive in their initial form, get reworked across the session, leave in a sharper form. The methodology is qualitative-developmental. Concept Screening is structured testing: the concepts are fixed, the methodology is quantitative-comparative, the output is a prioritised set. The two are complementary tools at different stages of the same innovation flow. Concepts have to be Lab-ready before they are Screening-ready (developed sharply enough that quantitative testing produces a reliable read). Where the concepts are not yet developed, Labs is the right precursor; where the concepts are developed and need prioritisation, Screening is the right tool. Many programmes commission both in sequence.
Scope and methodology design. Concept Screening is focused prioritisation: a defined set of developed concepts tested for which ones go forward, with the methodology built backwards from the investment decision. Idea Testing is competitive comparison at broader scale: many ideas tested against each other in a tournament-style structure, designed to identify winners from a wider pool. Different briefs need different methodologies. Where the concept set is defined and the decision is which to invest in, Screening is the right tool. Where the concept set is broader and the brief is identifying winners from across the pool, Idea Testing is structurally different.
Depends on the cuts required and the decision the work supports. Typical UK screening samples are four hundred to one thousand consumers per concept, with larger samples for international work, sub-cut robustness (specific audience cuts requiring decision-grade evidence) or competitive screening (where the competitive set adds analytical complexity). We design the sample at scoping against the decision: investment committee scrutiny typically requires larger samples than internal NPD prioritisation; brand work typically smaller than commercial committal work. We will tell you straight what sample makes sense for your specific brief and your specific decision audience.
Five food and drink-specific metrics as the foundation: concept appeal, distinctive ownership, occasion fit, brand permission, purchase intent in context. Some briefs add metrics: range fit (for portfolio briefs), channel-specific intent (for category briefs), competitive comparison (where competitive concepts are tested alongside). The framework is built around food and drink reality rather than generic FMCG metrics, which is why the screening results correlate more reliably with commercial performance in this sector than generic concept testing does.
Yes, when the methodology is scoped properly against the decision the work supports. Screening with decision-grade sample sizes, food and drink-specific metrics and senior interpretation is structurally designed for board, finance and investment committee scrutiny. The output includes transparent methodology, defensible rationale, and clear flagging of confidence intervals and limitations. We will tell you straight at scoping what level of confidence the methodology will support for your specific decision, and we will not over-claim on the certainty of screening output. Concept screening is decision-support evidence, not a guarantee of commercial performance, and the deliverable is honest about that.
Sometimes, but not always. Concepts have to be developed enough that quantitative testing produces a reliable read. Concepts that are still in ideation form (in concept-title language, executional detail open, key boundaries unclear) will produce unreliable screening data because consumer reaction is being driven by interpretation gaps rather than by the concept itself. We will tell you straight at scoping whether your concepts are screening-ready, including recommending Concept Labs development first if they are not. Going to screening too early is the most common reason concepts fail testing for reasons that have more to do with concept maturity than with consumer interest.
It happens occasionally, and the methodology is designed to surface this honestly rather than to manufacture passers. The deliverable surfaces all concepts in the screening, including the ones that did not pass and the specific reasons (appeal too narrow, distinctive ownership weak, brand permission missing, purchase intent in context too low). Where no concepts pass, the senior team will tell you straight rather than recommending the least-bad option, and will recommend the right next step (further Labs development, ideation rework, strategic re-scoping). The honest output is what makes the screening commercially useful to the buyer commissioning it.
Six to ten weeks from scoping call to decision-ready readout. Compressed timelines are possible where the methodology is straightforward (single-market, single-audience, focused concept set) and the fieldwork can run on existing panel infrastructure. More complex screening (international, competitive comparison, sub-cut analysis, large concept sets) typically runs ten to fourteen weeks. We give realistic timelines at proposal stage.
Yes. We run Concept Screening across the UK, mainland Europe, the US and the UAE, with sample structure and methodology adapted for each market. International screening has higher operational complexity than single-market work because the methodology has to handle cross-market comparability (for global decisions) or market-specific calibration (for local decisions). We will recommend the right approach at scoping.
Project-based, scoped against the number of concepts, the sample size, the geographic scope, the depth of analytical work and the audience for the deliverable. Single-market UK screening of a focused concept set is the lowest entry point; multi-market competitive screening with full sub-cut analysis is the highest. We give a clear, all-in quote at proposal stage with no hidden extras, and we will tell you straight if your budget would buy better outcomes invested in a different combination of services.
Got developed concepts that need defensible prioritisation before investment commitment?
Tell us the concepts, where they came from, the investment decision the screening has to support, the audience for the deliverable, and the timeline. We will tell you whether Concept Screening is the right tool, what sample size makes sense, what metrics the brief implies, and what it will cost. Where the concepts need Labs development before screening or where Idea Testing would suit the brief better, we will recommend that honestly.