Based on your reading about benefit tests, complete "Enhance Your Understanding: The Benefit Test". Here is a step-by-step process for the benefit test:

1. Select a general category of product or service that you know something about, and that might well be sold via direct response (type of clothing, backpack, food item, electronics item, etc.)

2. Brainstorm a list of possible benefits of that product or service. Remember that benefits are not product attributes but answers to the buyer's question, "What's in it for me?" Example: the product attribute of a shirt might be that it's 100% cotton. The benefits you test might include softness, easy care, breathability, etc.

3. Write each benefit on a slip of paper or a 35 card. Keep them short and simple. Come up with 10-15 benefits.

4. Find 5 to 10 people who could well be in the market for this type of product. Interview them separately to avoid "group think.

5. Ask each person to flip through the cards and place them in three groups: "very important," "somewhat important." and "not important."

6. Then go back to the "very important" pile and have them rank these items -- as the chapter says - - first for importance and then for uniqueness. Ask the people if you've left any benefits out that they would add.

7. Keep track of the results of all your interviews and see what patterns emerge. Using this simple research process, you are looking for a benefit that is considered both very important and unique to your product in the mind of your target market.

8. Write up your results to submit to me. Include the benefits you used, the results you achieved, and your recommendation based on the test. Ideally you will make a chart that indicates the name of each person and shows their responses.

Benefit Tests Perhaps the most immediately useful and cost-effective marketing research tool for creative people is the benefit test. To develop a benefit test, a copywriter prepares a list of possible benefit statements pertaining to a product or service. These statements may be drawn from comments at focus groups, consumer interviews, or brainstorming sessions. Each benefit should be stated individually, in sentence form, on a card. In private interviews, qualified prospects should be shown the cards, one after the other, and asked to rate the importance of each in the product purchase decision on a scale of 1 to 10. Then the consumer should look at each card again, this time rating the same benefits as to their uniqueness. In addition, consumers should be asked if they can identify other important benefits that were not mentioned as part of the test. To evaluate a benefit test, determine which benefits are considered both important and unique by prospects. These are the most promising benefits to use in developing creative concepts. Enhance Your Understanding: The Benefit Test Try conducting your own basic benefit test. For the most learning, choose a product or service you know little about and a viable target market that is very different from yourself in terms of demographics and psychographics. Research the product/service and make a list of potential benefits for it - then follow the step-by-step benefit test format described in this chapter. Conclude each interview with an open-ended question such as, "What else would you see as a benefit of product/service XYZ? Analyze your results. What did you discover about the product/service and the target market - just by conducting this simple test- that you would not have learned otherwise