Recently, Testpoint selected the participants for a very particular market research: it involved 20 personal in-depth interviews to evaluate the design of a new food processor. The aim of the research was to understand if the line, the colors, the shape of the prototype were captivating enough to encourage its use as a piece of furniture for the kitchen.
20 personal in-depth interviews in central location
Testpoint has recently carried out a market research for the evaluation of a prototype of a famous food processor manufacturer that is preparing a new high-end, elegant and functional model designed to be kept visible in the kitchen, because it is not only high performing but also conceived as a piece of furniture.
The first step was to find the test participants: 20 women, some of whom already had food processors from the client company or from competitor companies, others were potential buyers. But that’s not enough: being an object proposed to be kept visible in the kitchen, it was necessary that among the interviewees there were people with different types of kitchen: from the kitchenette, to the small kitchen, to the bigger ones.
The test was carried out in Milan in a central location, a facility specially equipped for market research. In the large room, without its usual furnishings, the prototype of the food processor was available for interviewees to examine together with many posters showing the possible variations of color and finishes and also some examples of placement of the robot in the different types of kitchens.
The objective was to understand if the product could be considered as a trendy object, if its line was considered futuristic, colors were captivating, what the preferred finishes were and if the ladies interviewed could be interested in placing it on sight in their kitchen as a piece of furniture, even in small rooms..
These were individual in-depth interviews lasting 90 minutes, in which each participant was guided by the moderator in a conversation that started from the description of the house and the kitchen-environment to the food processor usage habits until arriving to show the prototype and all the visual material. The moderator freely followed a discussion guide, making the conversation fluid, natural and spontaneous.
How interviews were carried out
Did the subject of this research aroused your curiosity? Do you want to know the opinion of one of the participating ladies? We ask Marta, a 45-year-old Milan teacher to tell us about her experience.
“For me, the food processor is a fundamental accessory that I could no longer do without. I work in a school quite far from my house, I have a husband and two teenage children, you can understand that the time for cooking is very little! But I don’t want to give up preparing our meals with care and fantasy, I also like to prepare pizzas and focaccias or cakes for my children and their friends. For this, a food processor is a great help for me. When I was contacted for the interview, I was happy to give my contribution. I was afraid that 90 minutes would be long, and I wondered what I could talk about for so long. Instead, the interview was a pleasant conversation and time passed quickly also because I had so much material to observe and judge. A furniture food processor? I never thought about it, but the placement proposals with the different possibilities of colors and finishes seemed very interesting to me”.
