Conceptual products: Before a new product or service is launched, it is prudent to conduct a feasibility analysis, which is the process whereby one determines if the idea holds promise (Barringer & Ireland, 2011). An initial step in this procedure is concept testing, wherein a description of the proposed product or service is shown to potential customers and questions indicative of market potential are asked (Moore, 1982; Ozer, 2009, 2011; Peng & Finn, 2010). Two common questions of this sort are “purchase intention” and “recommend intention.” Namely, the respondent is asked whether (1) she or he would personally buy the item in question if it were to be made available, and (2) would he or she recommend it to colleagues, family and friends. Typically, diagnostic questions are also asked to provide insight about the reasons underlying the stated intentions (Yuspeh, 1975).
Existing products: For existing products, these two intention questions are also frequent survey metrics for assessing customer loyalty (Aksoy, 2013; Keininghan, Cooil, Aksoy, Andreassen, & Weiner, 2007; Oliver, 1999; Taylor, Houlahan, & Gabriel, 1975), and are used to predict a product’s eventual share of the market and profitability. In this usage, instead of asking about a purchase intention, the question deals with a repurchase intention. Questions about satisfaction with the product or service are very common in loyalty evaluations, but these can’t be asked in concept studies because the product has not been used. As noted by Smith (2012), “… it may be meaningful to measure attitudes towards a product or service that a consumer has never used, but it is not meaningful to measure satisfaction when a product or service has not been used.”