Through consumer in-home testing, focus groups, interviews, and surveys (telephone and/or mail), INVENTConnect offers you efficient, effective options for gaining the competitive edge in your market. INVENTConnect's clients are given the benefit of knowing what customers want before investing in the full development of a product or implementation of a marketing plan.

INVENTConnect can also enhance your marketing plan by evaluating and/or producing your product literature, warranty, and instructional materials; or, by conducting price studies.

Through electronic and archival database searches, INVENTConnect can identify industry publications, associations, conferences, trade shows and competitors in the assistive technology and aging fields to keep you up-to-date on the latest industry trends and developments.

Focus Groups
Customers provide valuable insights into the development or improvement of your products and/or services. Before the group takes place a moderator ’s guide is developed with each client in order to provide the general direction of the group.

During the group, participants are led through a series of warm-up questions in order to become relaxed with each other as well as to become comfortable in front of the cameras and the two-way mirror.

The questions are then continued based on the following four areas of interest:

Current Status:
Outlines the products and/or practices that your customers currently use to meet the needs that your product is intended to fill.

Development of Ideal Product:
Consumers are guided to establish the ideal product that would fill the need that your product is intended to fill. This portion of the group is intended to identify issues that are important to the participants prior to seeing the product that will be reviewed – thereby eliminating bias.

Evaluation of Prototype/Concept:
Details participant reactions to the various design and functional features of your product. Outlines the ways in which your product is perceived to be superior or inferior to the ideal product developed by the group in the previous segment. In the event that a prototype is not available or is not easily transported and displayed, INVENTConnect can use computer-generated images, artistic renderings and non-working models for group evaluation.

Purchase Intent/Price Point:
Outlines the price participants are willing to pay for both the ideal product, as well as your product. Also details locations where participants would expect to find your product and/or product information.

Additional issues that are commonly identified during the focus group process relate to pricing, advertising, packaging, and purchase intent. This method of evaluating products prior to their final store-ready completion allows your designers to make changes prior to the expense of retooling and manufacturing.