Product Awareness

We have implemented a simple method of accounting for product awareness within the market simulator.  If the study involves a new-to-the-world brand or product that currently has low awareness and if that low awareness is expected to be a major barrier to adoption, then the researcher may wish to adjust the simulator to penalize certain brands or products due to low awareness.

When click the My Scenario Settings tab and check Apply Product Awareness, click the icon to edit its settings.

Respondent awareness is imported from a .CSV (comma-separated values file) file that you can prepare with software such as Excel.  The format for that file is:

The first column is always the Respondent ID# and remaining columns correspond to each of the products you have defined within the current simulation scenario.

Awareness is coded as a "1" and lack of awareness is coded as "0".  In the example above, respondent #1001 is aware of products 1 and 2, but not 3.

During simulations, if the respondent is not aware of a product, it is as if that product is not available to the respondent: the unaware product(s) receives 0% share of preference.

Fractional Awareness

The adjustment for product awareness is "all or nothing."  You cannot indicate fractional awareness, such as "somewhat aware" meaning a non-zero fraction of share of preference using this dialog.  However, there are three workarounds:

1.  If you want to simulate what might happen to overall share of preference as the market becomes more aware of your product, you could first run a simulation with awareness coded as described above (respondents who are unaware of your product yield 0% share of preference).  Then, you can modify the awareness data in the .CSV file to investigate what might happen if (say) half of the people who are currently unaware of your product can be made aware of it.  You could modify the awareness .CSV file and use a random selection process to set half of the respondents who are currently unaware of your product to become aware of it (change their awareness values from "0" to "1" for your product).  Then, re-import the updated awareness information into the simulator and re-run the simulation.

2. You can use the Product Availability (Multi-store) function to apply awareness. Imagine there are 4 products in the market simulator: A, B, C and D.  Imagine you believe that A-C have full awareness, but a new entrant D has only 50% awareness on average across the population.  You can use the Apply Product Availability (Multi-Store) dialog to accomplish this.   If using Average Product Availability in the Market, set product distribution to 50% for product D, but 100% for products A-C.  Or, if using Apply Granular Store Information, you can replicate the stores and delete D from the replicated stores.  Then, make sure the replicated stores are “shopped” 50% of the time relative to the original copies of the stores.

3. Fractional awareness by respondent: Imagine you asked respondents about product D and they responded if they were “Aware,” “Somewhat Aware,” or “Not Aware.”  And, you decide to assign awareness as 100% for “Aware”, 75% for “Somewhat Aware,” and 0% for “Not Aware.”  Create two stores where products A-D are available in the first store and products A-C are the only ones available in the second store.  If a respondent is aware of product D, then set her probability of visiting store 1 to be 100% and store 2 to be 0%.  If she is “Somewhat Aware” of product D, then set her probability of visiting store 1 to be 75% and store 2 to be 25%, etc.

Additional Notes:  

If a respondent is missing from the awareness .CSV file, but has part-worth utilities, then the respondent is assumed to have awareness of all products in the simulation.

If a respondent is included in the .CSV file but has no awareness for all the products, then the respondent is treated as if he/she is aware of all products (unless a None concept is included in the simulation, then this respondent gives 100% share to the None concept).