Like any other product category, consumer insights are integral to business success in the cannabis industry too. It is imperative that licensed producers seek out a third party consumer product testing company to conduct their cannabis research. While some may consider cannabis and cannabis infused products (including edibles, beverages, oils etc.) to be “just another category”, testing with consumers should be considered to be anything but. There is value in not only conducting third party product testing, but also considering the uniqueness of the category and its specific research requirements when choosing a research partner.
The following are Virescent’s Top 5 Reasons for investing in third party testing of products containing cannabis:
- Removal of internal bias – while employees and developers are passionate about and driven to making and marketing successful products, they are infrequently capable of making unbiased decisions which is the expertise of a third party research firm, from project design, to final report
- Objectivity in research – third party researchers are inherently objective in their view of the purpose and results of the specific research and most importantly the interpretation of what the data is saying, without influence of personality, beliefs and values
- Qualitative and quantitative research – while time consuming but seemingly straightforward, qualitative and quantitative research each require the expertise of seasoned personnel; qualitative research is only as good as the moderator and the guide they develop to address the business and research objectives; and quantitative research, especially in sensory evaluation, is only as good as the experienced researcher in both sensory and consumer product research, specifically pertaining to cannabis
- Access to norms and benchmarks – while cannabis product testing is a new category and should be treated as such, the fundamental product research methodologies remain the same, thus some specific cross-category benchmarks remain useful for decision making
- Ability of third party to apply learnings from testing in other cannabis categories – a third party consumer product research supplier has experience across multiple cannabis categories and can apply this invaluable exposure to each subsequent project
For more information on third party product testing with products containing cannabis, contact: