Test marketing

A form of full scale market testing. Usually involves actually marketing a new product in one or several cities. The effort is representative of what the firm intends to do later on national marketing (or rollout). Here, various aspects of the marketing plan are tested (such as advertising expenditure levels or, product form variants) by using several pairs of cities. Output is a mix of learning, especially a sales and profit forecast. The term test marketing is sometimes stretched to other forms of market testing, particularly the electronic versions and simulated test markets, but the term is best confined to the full scale activity.